Article published in:
Studies in Language
Vol. 44:4 (2020) ► pp. 737–787

Associated motion, direction and (exchoative) aspect in Ethiopian Komo

| Eastern Connecticut State University
Komo (Koman) of Ethiopia has an obligatory paradigm of deictic directional (dd) verb morphology that, among its functions, indicates direction of motion relative to a deictic reference point, associated motion and grammatical aspect when collocated with verb roots of different semantic classes. The semantic components of a motion event underlie the Komo dd system and the grammatical aspect of a predicate can be directly mapped to the bounded/unbounded path profile. The Associated Motion function contains a bounded path which entails arrival at or departure from a reference point and, as a result, imparts aspectual telicity to the predicate. The Direction function by contrast, contains an unbounded path that expresses motion towards a reference point and does not impart aspectual telicity. Further, some morphemes express exchoativity, or the ‘exiting’ of a state, a rare if unattested grammatical category.
Keywords: Koman, Nilo-Saharan, associated motion, direction, path, aspect, exchoative
Published online: 21 August 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.17035.ote
References

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