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date: 22 February 2019

Abstract and Keywords

This article examines the case and agreement systems of Amharic with particular reference to the phenomena of differential subject marking (DSM) and differential object marking (DOM). It discusses two interrelated issues: the semantic factors that may be relevant to DSM and DOM, and the interaction between DSM/DOM and agreement on the verb. First, the article provides a brief typological and genetic background of the Amharic language and then establishes the presence of the grammatical relations subject and direct object on the basis of language-internal formal evidence. It also considers word order in Amharic, the accusative suffix -n, the distribution of the object/indirect object agreement suffix, the quirky (non-canonical) case marking of certain subjects, and experience predicates.

Keywords: Amharic, case, differential subject marking, differential object marking, case marking, subjects, direct object, word order, grammatical relations, predicates

Mengistu Amberber

Mengistu Amberber is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia). His research interests include lexical semantics, the semantics-syntax interface, morphosyntactic theory, and linguistic typology. He is the co-editor of Language Universals and Variation (Praeger, 2002), Competition and Variation in Natural Languages: The Case for Case (Elsevier, 2005), and editor of The Language of Memory in a Cross-linguistic Perspective (Benjamins, 2007).

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