Abstract
This chapter investigates the semantics of alienable possession in Amharic, with particular reference to a recent proposal in the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) framework according to which ‘true possession’ or ‘ownership’ is more adequately expressed by the semantic prime (is) mine than by the (now abandoned) prime have (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2016). The chapter argues that this claim is borne out by data from Amharic. It will be shown that the verb allə ‘have’ cannot reliably distinguish between true possession and other types of possessive relations, whereas the sequence jəne nəw ‘it is mine’ is consistently associated with ownership. The chapter also briefly examines the semantics of two sets of verbs təbəddərə ‘borrow’/abəddərə ‘lend’, and wərrəsə ‘inherit’/awərrəsə ‘bequeath’, in which the semantic prime for alienable possession plays a key role. It is hoped that the chapter will contribute towards a lexical semantic typology of possession concepts.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The verb allə has suppletive past and future forms, nəbbərə and norə respectively, which also function independently as existential verbs.
- 2.
The following abbreviations are used in interlinear glosses: acc = accusative; apl = applicative; att = attenuative; aux = auxiliary verb; cop = copula; csd = direct causative; def = definite article; f = feminine; gen = genitive; ipfv = imperfective verb; m = masculine; medp = medio-passive; neg = negation; npst = non-past tense; obj = object or non-subject agreement; pl = plural; pfv = perfective verb; s = singular; sbj = subject.
- 3.
One possible analysis of this construction is to say that the possessor NP is actually in a dislocated or extraposed syntactic position (Hetzron 1970: 307).
- 4.
- 5.
The root of the copula verb, the single segment *n-, cannot occur by itself: it must be inflected for person, number and gender. It also has irregular past and negative forms—nəbbərə ‘it was’ and ajdəlləmm ‘it is not’, respectively. A detailed discussion of the inflectional properties of this verb, including gender distinction (as suggested by an anonymous reviewer) will take us too far afield. The interested reader may consult Leslau’s (1995) comprehensive reference grammar.
- 6.
While it can be definite it has a different (not necessarily possessive) interpretation.
- 7.
As an anonymous reviewer suggested, this may be due to the ‘non-static’ nature of time: “something about its lack of boundedness or lack of delineation that leads to it being problematic in the structures discussed”.
- 8.
This notion of ‘temporary’ transfer of ownership may not be appropriate for describing the meaning of financial borrowing, which we will look at later in this section.
- 9.
The basic stem of the verb, shown in examples (23) and (24), does not occur by itself. It belongs to a class of verbs that require a valency encoding prefix to be well-formed (see Amberber 2002 and references therein).
- 10.
The money paid back will have more value if it involves interest, the normal situation.
- 11.
The gloss ‘throne’ for the word alga is not entirely accurate here as the word literally means ‘bed’. There is a separate word for ‘throne’ in Amharic: zufan.
References
Amberber, M. (2002). Verb classes and transitivity in Amharic. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Amberber, M. (2008). Semantic primes in Amharic. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 83–119). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.102.09amb.
Baker, M. (2012). On the relationship of object agreement and accusative case: Evidence from Amharic. Linguistic Inquiry, 43(1), 255–274. https://doi.org/10.1162/LING_a_00085.
Baker, M., & Kramer, R. (2014). Rethinking Amharic prepositions as case markers inserted at PF. Lingua, 145, 141–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2014.03.005.
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2016). ‘It’s Mine!’: Rethinking the conceptual semantics of “possession” through NSM. Language Sciences, 56, 93–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2016.03.002.
Hetzron, R. (1970). Toward an Amharic case-grammar. Studies in African Linguistics, 1(3), 301–354.
Kane, T. L. (1990). Amharic-english dictionary. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Kapeliuk, O. (1994). Syntax of the noun in Amharic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Kramer, R. (2014). Clitic doubling or object agreement: The view from Amharic. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 32(2), 593–634. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-014-9233-0.
Leslau, W. (1995). Reference grammar of Amharic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Milsark, G. L. (1974). Existential sentences in English. Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Safir, K. (1987). What explains the definiteness effect? In E. J. Reuland & A. G. B. ter Meulen (Eds.), The representation of (in)definiteness (pp. 71–97). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tham, S. W. (2006). The definiteness effect in English have sentences. In P. Denis et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2004 texas linguistics society conference (pp. 137–149). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Tham, S. W. (2013). Possession as non-verbal predication. Berkeley linguistics society: Proceedings of the annual meeting (Vol. 39, pp. 302–316). https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.v39i1.3888.
Yimam, B. (1996). Definiteness in Amharic discourse. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 17(1), 47–83.
Yimam, B. (1997). The verb ‘to have’ in Amharic. In K. Fukui, E. Kurimoto, & M. Shigeta (Eds.), Ethiopia in broader perspective: Papers of the 13th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Vol. 1, pp. 619–636). Kyoto: Shokado.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to the editors, Kerry Mullan, Bert Peeters and Lauren Sadow, for inviting me to contribute a chapter to this volume. Special thanks are due to Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka for their comments on an earlier draft of the chapter. Many thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and corrections. I hope there aren’t too many errors remaining, but if there are, they are mine. The chapter is intended as a small token of appreciation for Cliff’s continuing interest in my work. Thank you!
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Appendix—Amharic Exponents of Semantic Primes (cf. Amberber 2008)
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Amberber, M. (2020). The Conceptual Semantics of Alienable Possession in Amharic. In: Mullan, K., Peeters, B., Sadow, L. (eds) Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9983-2_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9983-2_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-32-9982-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-32-9983-2
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)