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[PANEL] 0812 GENERAL PANEL "STUDIES IN CUSHITIC AND OMOTIC LANGUAGES"
Organizers:
AKLILU Yilma, Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
Paper presenters:
Hawa ABDILLAHI FARAH; AKLILU Yilma
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LANGUAGE CONTACT AND CODE-SWITCHING : THE SOMALI LANGUAGE IN DJIBOUTI [Abstract ID: 0812-05]
Djibouti presents a complex configuration of its sociolinguistic situation with the presence of several languages. To understand the language mixing in Djibouti, Somali is one of the country's national languages alongside Afar and also refers to the Somali community as Afar. The official languages in Djibouti are French and literary Arabic. In addition to these four languages, there are the Arabic dialects (hakmi and souki) that are spoken by the Djibouti Arabs. Finally, we find in Djibouti the foreign languages such as English (taught as a foreign language), Amharic (which is growing thanks to trade between Djibouti and Ethiopia). Djiboutian speakers have a linguistic practice that imprints many linguistic phenomena that result from the use of several languages. There is not much work on Somali linguistics spoken in Djibouti. On the other hand, the variety of Somali spoken in Djibouti in contact with the other languages has never been studied until now and at least Code-Switching and all the other linguistic changes. The Code-Switching is a mixture of two or more codes or languages by a bilingual or a multilingual in the same speech with the same interlocutor on the same subject. The purpose of this paper is to describe intrasentential, intersentential and extrasentential code-switching through Somali spoken by bilingual Djiboutians (Somali and French). To do this work, MEYER SCOTTON's Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model (1993) and the syntax constraints of POPLACK (1981) will be used to explain the different forms of code alternation. And, our corpus will be two episodes of a television show (broadcast on May 23, 2016 and November 7, 2016 and entitled "qalinka iyo aqoonta") presented in Somali.
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SPECIAL LANGUAGE USE BY WOMEN IN SOME HIGHLAND EAST CUSHITIC LANGUAGES: A DESCRIPTIVE AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS [Abstract ID: 0812-01]
The main aim of this paper is to describe and compare the unique system of women's speech in four Highland Cushitic languages. In many societies, the speech of women and men varies. The variation between women and men's speech may be trivial in some societies while in others the language difference between the two genders is significant and rigorous. The latter type of variation between women and men has been observed among genetically closely related Highland East Cushitic languages: Sidama, Hadiya, Kambata, Tambaro, Alaba and Kabena. Among these linguistic groups, the speech of women and men vary because of taboo. The social and cultural values that these societies held have affected the speech of women. In general, married women are not allowed to mention the names of their in-laws, the names of their husbands and his older siblings and the clan names of their husband. This system of in-laws language is referred to as ballisha in Sidama, ballissu in Kambata, Tambaro and Alaba, and balluwisha in Hadiya. This paper focuses on the last four languages and/or dialects. To avoid calling the taboo names, the women use various mechanisms or methods, such as ballisha terms, synonyms, initial sound or syllable substitution, circumlocutions, polite personal pronouns and teknonymy.