An Overview Of Central Dizin Phonology And Morphology

Abstract

Dizin (Dizi) is an Omotic language spoken in Southwest Ethiopia with three main dialects. This thesis focuses on Central Dizin phonology and morphology, but includes some data from Eastern Dizin and Western Dizin. Prolonged language contact with Amharic has affected the sound system of Dizin and numerous Amharic words have been borrowed. Features of the Dizin sound system include glottalized consonants, syllabic nasals, lengthened vowels, three phonemic tone levels and contour tones. Western Dizin has phonemic retroflex consonants. The glottal stop is analyzed as phonemic word initially before nasals, but not phonemic elsewhere. Dizin is polysynthetic and more agglutinative than fusional. Dizin has a stacked (compound) case system, a switch reference marker on medial verbs, a complex system of relativizing verbs, and interdependent verbs. Most of the words that modify nouns are understood to be relativized verbs.