| Arbore | |
| Also Known As: | Arbora |
| States: | Ethiopia |
| Region: | extreme southwest, Omo region |
| Ref: | e25 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| Ethnicity: | Arbore |
| Familycolor: | Afro-Asiatic |
| Fam2: | Cushitic |
| Fam3: | Lowland East |
| Fam4: | Western Omo–Tana |
| Iso3: | arv |
| Glotto: | arbo1245 |
| Glottorefname: | Arbore |
Arbore is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by the Arbore people in southern Ethiopia in a few settlements of Hamer woreda near Lake Chew Bahir.[1] [2]
That the Arbore language belongs within a "Macro-Somali" (now called Omo-Tana) group was first recognized by Sasse (1974). Other members of this group are Daasanach, Bayso, Rendille, Boni and the various Somali dialects. Omo-Tana itself is a major division of Lowland East Cushitic. Arbore's nearest relatives (jointly classified as Western Omo-Tana) are Daasanach and especially the probably extinct Kenyan language of the Elmolo fishermen of Lake Turkana. The sub-grouping is justified in terms of uniquely shared lexicon and certain common grammatical innovations, amongst which the generalizations of the absolute forms of the 1st person singular and 2nd person singular personal pronouns to subject function, thereby replacing the earlier Proto-Lowland East Cushitic forms, e.g. 2nd personal pronouns, e.g., 2nd person singular tai/u 'thou': ki/u 'thee', but Arbore ke 'thou' and 'thee'.
The phonology of Arbore was described by Hayward (1984). He lists the following phonemes:
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
| Plosive | Voiceless | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |
| Voiced | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
| Ejective | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
| Implosive | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
| Liquid | Lateral | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Trill | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||
| Glide | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
All consonant phonemes except /h, ʃ, ŋ, p, ʔ/ can be geminated.
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |
| Close-mid | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |
| Open | pronounced as /ink/ | ||
In Arbore, no word begins or ends with more than one consonantal segment. Moreover, no word contains a sequence of more than two consonantal segments internally.
There are instances in which sounds differ from their usual pronunciation. The differences follow certain patterns and these patterns are:
Arbore well exemplifies a number of typical Lowland East Cushitic features such as: a three-term number system (basic unit: singulative: plural) in nouns, within which "polarity" figures, i.e., gender alternations across the various number forms of a lexeme; a morphosyntax thoroughly deployed in distinguishing topic and contrastive focus; great morphophonological complexity in its verbal derivation and inflection.[3] Of historical interest is the language's preservation of at least a dozen verbs of the archaic "Prefix Conjugation", often attributed to Proto-Afroasiatic itself.
There are several patterns for the way the plural of nouns can be formed. Which pattern is used depends on morphological, lexical and phonological categories. For consonant-final, masculine nouns, -mé is suffixed. Half of these forms are sr forms ending in -n, - č or -t. However, simple ur forms and feminine forms also possible in this pattern. To masculine, consonant-final nouns, -a?ame is added as a suffix in the plural. Additionally, there is a fairly large group of mostly feminine nouns with an h-tone in the end, to which -n is suffixed in the plural. To other feminine nouns with a final consonant, -ó as added a suffix. Plural nouns with a final vowel have -má as a suffix to indicate the plural. There are further patterns of the pluralization of nouns, but these other patterns are only minor.
Adjectives in Arbore have either a predicative or an attributive function and their form depends on this function. In the predicative function, adjectives only have one form which does not change depending on the gender of the subject noun. In the attributive function they act as a modifier in a noun phrase. In this case, the adjective has two forms: in the non-plural form, -a is added as a suffix, and in the plural form, -o is suffixed. Adjectives also have forms with reduplicated stems, which can be substituted for the single-stem forms when the noun is semantically plural. Otherwise, these adjectives work the same way as single-stem adjectives.
There are simple forms and suffixed forms of independent subject pronouns, which are summarized in the table below. The simple forms are used in sentences with either one other focussed constituent or in neutral sentences without a focussed constituent. For the -he form, it is important to note that it cannot take the function of an object. The -t form can replace the simple form and can function as subject and object in sentences without focussed constituents. All other forms can stand as nominal predicates.
| Simple form | -he form | -t form|-s(s)e form|-ta form | ø/-he/-t + -lo form | ||||
| 1s | yé | Y[éhe] | y[éhe]lo | ||||
| 2s | ké | K[éhe] | k[éhe]lo | ||||
| 1p | ?onó | ?onos(s)e | ?onolo | ||||
| 2p | ?ín | ?inse | ?inlo | ||||
| Abs. nom. | |||||||
| 3ms | ?us(s)ú ús(s)u | ?us(s)út ?ús(s)ut | ?us(s)uta | ?us(s)u[l:]o | |||
| 3fs | ?es(s)ét ?és(s)et | ?es(s)eta | ?es(s)u[l:]o | ||||
| 3p | ?os(s)ót ?ós(s)ot | ?os(s)ota | ?os(s)u[l:]o |
There are different patterns of verb conjugation. These can be divided into two classes: the prefix conjugations and the suffix conjugations.
There are two patterns of prefix conjugation, which is rarer than the suffix conjugation, only applying to 12 verbs in total.
There are the following patterns of suffix conjugation:
In Arbore, there are two types of prepositions. The first type has a nominal origin and is homophonous with nouns denoting either locations or body parts. Focussed noun phrases take the phrase-final clitic subject pronoun. Location words, however, appear to be more postpositional in that they occur as heads of genitival constructions, and the clitic-pronoun is attached to them. The second type does not have a nominal counterpart and does not appear in any other syntactic position. Some of these prepositions are bound to a particular verb lexically. ?ár, for example, generally indicates movement towards the speaker when the verb is an intransitive verb of motion, or activity an activity with motion. Additionally, there is ?ug, which generally indicates movement away from the speaker. Ka is the commonest preposition, which can have several meanings depending on the context. It can have an ablative sense with some verbs, and with other verbs a dative or beneficiary meaning. But it can also carry a sense of location in place or time. Lastly, there is kaŋ, which always relates to instrumentality or path.
Numerals in Arbore share many grammatical properties of nouns. They have an inherent gender, even though the phonological shape or tone do not always correlate with their counterparts in nouns. Additionally, semantic plurality is grammatically more important than gender. The numbers 1-10 and one hundred are listed with their gender in the table below.
| English | Arbore | |
|---|---|---|
| one | takká (f), tokkó (m) | |
| two | laamá (p) | |
| three | seezzé (p) | |
| four | ʔafúr (f) | |
| five | čénn (f) | |
| six | ǧih (f) | |
| seven | tuzba (p) | |
| eight | suyé (f)/(p) | |
| nine | saagald (f) | |
| ten | tommon~d (f) | |
| one hundred | dibbá (m) |
In neutral sentences, the word order is the following: subject (S); preverbal selections (PVS); complements (if necessary); verb (V). Complement phrases can precede the PVS, but a subject noun phrase (NP) can never be used after the PVC. Also in all other types of sentences the verb generally comes last.
In questions, the word order is: S – question word – verb. Arbore has three interrogative pronouns which can be translated with "which" and depend on the gender of the subject: búko for masculine subjects; bítoko for feminines; and toko for plurals. Furthermore, there is the question pronoun bíteh meaning "whose". When asking for an amount, kaakó is used.
In Arbore, the pronominal possessor is attached to the possessed as a suffix. These suffixes have different forms depending on the gender of the noun: -h- is used for masculine and plural nouns and -t- with feminine nouns. The gender suffixes can not stand on their own. The gender suffix -h- occurs with vowel-final nouns and is assimilated in consonant-final nouns. The masculine and plural marker is independent of the spelling of the head noun. Additionally, there are seven possessive definitives that are attached to the head noun as a suffix following the gender marker:
| singular | plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st person | -áw | -ánno | |
| 2nd person | -áako/ -áakko | -áň | |
| 3rd person | -ásut/ -ássut | -áso/ -ásso | |
| -áset/ -ásset | |||
The possessive definitives are attached to the head noun of a sentence following a suffix with the owner being suffixed to the thing that is being owned.
Relative clauses always follow their heads, meaning that the suffixes are gender-sensitive and are always attached to the head noun. The suffixes are: -h- for masculine nouns, and -t- for feminine nouns. Exceptions to this are nouns whose head takes the deictic definitive -lo-. In relative clauses, a preverbal selector as well as a predicate identifying element can never occur together with the relative clause verb. A bound subject pronoun can occur, however.