Phonological and Semantic Aspect of Ateso Derivation Verbal Morphology

Abstract

This thesis is a morphological study of Ateso, an Eastern Nilotic language. It examines some of the verbal derivational morphology in a generative framework within the Extended Standard theory. The work has been divided into four chapters. The first chapter deals with the background to the people who speak Ateso as a native language, and an introduction to some technical terms. These are followed by the statement of the problem, rationale for the choice of the problem, the % objectives, hypotheses, literature review, the theoretical framework to be used, and the methodology to be adopted. The second chapter gives analyses of the phonological and semantic aspects of five chosen derivational suffixes, that is, the Ventive, Itive, Applicative, Applicative- Reciprocal, and Instrumental. The phonological alternations are shown to be predictable, and general rules are given for these alternations. When discussing the semantic content of the derived forms it is shown that apparently diverse readings can be unified by deeper semantic analysis and more careful translation. Readings may be further determined by context at a higher level of interpretation such as the sentence. Chapter III deals specifically with the formulation of lexical derivational and lexical redundancy rules. Lexical derivational rules account for the productive processes while the lexical redundancy rules take care of the cases where there is a lexical relationship between words but neither is derived from the other. Percentage figures are given to show the degrees of productivity for the chosen extensions. The last chapter, Chapter IV, is a conclusion. It includes general remarks on the findings of this study and indicates areas of further research. This work also includes an appendix which gives further examples of the different semantic readings that can be determined by the context of occurrence of the different derived verbs.