Kambaata
Résumé
Kambaata is a Highland East Cushitic language spoken in southwestern Ethiopia. It has a phonemic length contrast both in its vowel and consonant systems. Kambaata is agglutinating-fusional and suffixing, with many portmanteau morphemes. Five open word classes are defined morphosyntactically: verbs, nouns, adjectives, ideophone, and interjections. Stress is phonemic and has a grammatical function; it serves, either alone or in combination with a segmental suffix, to distinguish between grammatical forms of one lexeme. Kambaata is a nominative-accusative language with an elaborate system of nine nominal cases. Nouns fall into two genders; number is rather derivational than inflectional in nature. Adjectives agree with their head nouns in case and gender. Verbs index the subject and are marked for aspect, mood, and dependency status. Past tense marking is periphrastic and optional. Subordinate verbs encompass different types of converbs and purposive verbs, some of which are sensitive to switch-reference marking, as well as relative verbs and verbal nouns. Negative relative verbs are almost perfect verb-adjective hybrids. Kambaata’s constituent order is consistently head-final. The present chapter gives an overview of salient aspects of Kambaata’s phonology, derivational and inflectional morphology, and syntax. The data is written in the official, Roman-based orthography.