Pluractionality of Lexical Aspects in Afaan Oromoo

Abstract

Pluractionality is the phenomenon that denotes plurality of events, happenings and states (situations) which are quantified and described through verbs. This study provides the description of pluractionality in Afaan Oromoo. The data were collected from written texts and crosschecked by native speakers and introspection. Based on the sample clauses, different semantic and structural types of pluractionality are identified and described. These are iterative, distributive and frequentative as well as causative, which is basically different structural category. Semantically, iterative shows regular repetition of occurrences in which the same participant is involved; the repetition occurs in a recurrent period of time. Distributive refers to multiple actors or participants in the events so that each event happens to exist with its own actor or participant, either simultaneously or consecutively in the same or different places. The other pluractional form is frequentative, which has single/identical participant who engage in a repeatedly regular occurrence of an event. The repeated event occurs in different times. On the other hand, causative is indicated using the causative morpheme. This involves affixation of -s with several variant forms, which are phonologically triggered. The marking strategies and structures of the first three are the same in that reduplication of the first syllable of the verb is employed to show pluractionality. The study concluded that pluractionality of lexical aspects is structurally represented by reduplication and affixation in Afaan Oromoo.