Sara Petrollino, *A Grammar of Hamar. A South Omotic Language of Ethiopia*

Yvonne Treis

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OpenEdition
Journals

**Electronic version**

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/lla/10359

DOI: 10.4000/lla.10359

ISSN: 2822-7468

**Publisher**

Llacan UMR 8135 CNRS/Inalco

**Printed version**

Date of publication: 31 December 2018

Number of pages: 140-152

ISSN: 2429-2230

**Electronic reference**

Yvonne Treis, "Sara Petrollino, *A Grammar of Hamar. A South Omotic Language of Ethiopia*", *Linguistique et langues africaines* [Online], 4 | 2018, Online since 03 January 2022, connection on 25 August 2023.

URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lla/10359 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/lla.10359

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LLA

Linguistique
et Langues
Africaines

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>

- A selecção do √P cause em Nyungwe:
  Uma análise à luz de Pylkkänen

- Kuteb Verbal Extensions vs. Bezen
  Verbal Serialization - A Comparison

- A Note on the Present Tenses in some
  Southern Tanzanian Bantu Languages

- Consonant Voicing, Tonal Morphemes,
  and Downstep in Gwari

- Les processus tonals en koyó

- Comptes-rendus / Book Reviews

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9 782359 352566
LLA

Linguistique
et Langues
Africaines

<figure><img src="image_6.png" /></figure>

#04

Juin 2018

1. A selecção do vP cause em Nyungwe: Uma análise à luz de Pylkkänen
*Crisofia Langa da Camara*

11

2. Kuteb Verbal Extensions vs. Bezen
Verbal Serialization - A Comparison
*Viktoria Kempf*

31

3. A Note on the Present Tenses in some
Southern Tanzanian Bantu Languages
*Bastian Persohn & Rasmus Bernander*

53

4. Consonant Voicing, Tonal Morphemes, and Downstep in Gwari
*Kolawole Adeniyi & Ben Elugbe*

77

Notes & Documents

Les processus tonals en koyó
*Régina Patience Ikemou*

101

Comptes-rendus / Book Reviews

Sokhna Bao Diop, Le Baynunk guñaamolo, une langue du sud du Sénégal: Analyse phonologique, morphologique et syntaxique
par Noël-Bernard Biagui

117

Sabine Littig, Linguistische Beschreibung des Kolbila. Eine Adamawaspracheder Nordregion Kameruns
par Aurore Montébran

122

Manuele Bandeira, Reconstrução fonológica e lexical do protocrioulo do Golfo da Guiné,
par Jean-Louis Rougé

129

John Vanderelst, A Grammar of Dagik,
par Thilo C. Schadeberg

133

Sara Petrollino, A Grammar of Hamar.
*A South Omotic Language of Ethiopia,
par Yvonne Treis*

140

En couverture : Partie de babyfoot au Cap-Vert (côte est de l'île de Santiago, dans les environs de Pedra Badejo),
photo : Nicolas Quint 2008.

Design : Jean-Irénée Cuin

Production - diffusion : Éditions Lambert-Lucas
LLA

Linguistique
et Langues
Africaines

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Cette revue est en accès libre

téléchargeable sur le site des éditions Lambert-Lucas

n° 1, juin 2015 :

http://www.lambert-lucas.com/linguistique-langues-africaines-1

n° 2, juin 2016 :

http://www.lambert-lucas.com/linguistique-langues-africaines-2

n° 3, juin 2017 :

http://www.lambert-lucas.com/linguistique-langues-africaines-3

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© Éditions Lambert-Lucas, 2018
ISSN 2429-2230
ISBN 978-2-35935-256-6
## Comité scientifique

Emilio BONVINI (LLACAN, CNRS), Denis CREISSELS (DDL, Université Lyon 2), Claude HAGÈGE (EPHE), Bernd HEINE (University of Cologne), Larry HYMAN (University of California - Berkeley), Sambieni KOFFI (Université d'Abomey-Calavi), Jérémie KOUADIO (Université d'Abidjan), Friederike LÜPKE (SOAS, University of London), Gudrun MIEHE (University of Bayreuth), Maarten MOUS (Leiden University), Pape Alioune NDAO (Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar), Margarida PETTERS (Universidade de São Paulo), Thilo SCHADEBERG (Leiden University), John MCWHORTER (Columbia University).

## Comité de rédaction

Nicolas AUBRY (LLACAN, INALCO), Pascal BOYELDIEU (LLACAN, CNRS), James ESSEGBEY (University of Florida), Gwenaëlle FABRE (LLL, Université d'Orléans), Maximilien GUÉRIN (LLACAN, CNRS), Stefano MANFREDI (Sedyl, CNRS), Sylvester OSU (LLL, Université de Tours), Cédric PATIN (STL, Université de Lille), Marie-Claude SIMEONE-SENELLE (LLACAN, CNRS), Lameen SOUAG (Lacito, CNRS), Yvonne TREIS (LLACAN, CNRS), Valentin VYDRIN (LLACAN, INALCO), Kofi YAKPO (University of Hong-Kong).

## Rédaction

Paulette ROULON-DOKO (LLACAN, CNRS), Nicolas QUINT (LLACAN, CNRS), Loïc-Michel PERRIN (LLACAN, INALCO).

## Administration

Jeanne ZERNER

## Directeur de la publication

Mark VAN DE VELDE
## Contact

LLACAN (UMR 8135, campus du CNRS)
7, rue Guy-Môquet
94801 VILLEJUIF Cedex - France
http://llacan.vjf.cnrs.fr/lla
llafrique@cnrs.fr

## Consignes de soumission

http://llacan.vjf.cnrs.fr/lla

## Comptes-rendus

Les ouvrages sont à adresser à
Maximilien Guérin (maximilien.guerin@cnrs.fr)
(s/c de Nicolas Quint et Yvonne Treis)
LLACAN (UMR 8135, campus du CNRS)
7, rue Guy-Môquet
94801 VILLEJUIF Cedex - France
# Sommaire / Contents

1. A selecção do vP cause em Nyungwe:
   Uma análise à luz de Pylkkänen .................................................... 11
   Crisofia Langa da Camara

2. Kuteb Verbal Extensions vs. Bezen Verbal Serialisation –
   A Comparison .................................................................................... 31
   Victoria Kempf

3. A Note on the Present Tenses in Some Southern Tanzanian
   Bantu Languages .................................................................................... 53
   Bastian Persohn & Rasmus Bernander

4. Consonant Voicing, Tonal Morphemes, and Downstep in Gwari . 77
   Kolawole Adeniyi & Ben Elugbe

## Notes & Documents

Les processus tonals en koyó ................................................................. 101
Régina Patience Ikemou

## Comptes-rendus / Book Reviews

Sokhna Bao Diop
*Le Baynunk guñaamolo, une langue du sud du Sénégal :*
*Analyse phonologique, morphologique et syntaxique* ........................ 117
par Noël-Bernard Biagui

Sabine Littig
*Linguistische Beschreibung des Kolbila. Eine Adamawasprache*
*der Nordregion Kameruns* .................................................................... 122
par Aurore Montébran

Manuele Bandeira
*Reconstrução fonológica e lexical do protocrioulo*
*do golfo da Guiné* ............................................................................ 129
par Jean-Louis Rougé
John Vanderelst
*A Grammar of Dagik* .................................................................................. 133
par Thilo C. Schadeberg

Sara Petrollino
*A Grammar of Hamar. A South Omotic Language of Ethiopia* ..... 140
par Yvonne Treis
The Hamar ethnic group is one of the best studied in Ethiopia thanks to
the works of the anthropologists Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall who,
together with their numerous students and other collaborators, have been
doing research in the South Omo area for many decades. Their out-
standing anthropological documentation, which also encompasses aspects
of linguistic anthropology, has so far been in stark contrast to the slim
documentation on the grammar and lexicon of Hamar. Lydall (1976) is a
brief grammatical sketch, while more recent works deal with grammatical
details, such as pronouns (Moges 2005) and copulas (Binyam & Moges
2014), but no comprehensive grammatical study has ever been conducted.
In the general linguistic literature, Hamar has until now been associated
with two features that have attracted the attention of typologists and
comparativists: Lydall (1988) reports on the unusual gender system, in
which feminine gender is associated with bigness and masculine gender
with smallness. Zaborski (2004) notes similarities between the Hamar
pronoun system and that of neighbouring Nilo-Saharan languages, on
which grounds he contests the affiliation of Hamar, and South Omotic
(SO) in general, to the Omotic stock. According to the last census
(Central Statistical Agency 2007), Hamar is spoken by an estimated
46,500 people in the South Omo Zone of Ethiopia's Southern Region.
The immediate neighbours are speakers of SO, East Cushitic, Eastern
Nilotic and Surmic languages.

With the book under review – the published version of a PhD thesis
written and defended at the universities of Lyon II and Leiden – Sara
Petrollino sets out to fill a crucial gap in our linguistic knowledge of SO
and provides the first substantial description of Hamar. The thirteen
chapters, totalling 285 pages and ranging from phonology to pragmatics,
are supplemented by an appendix with three selected texts (two animal
tales and a procedural text, pp. 287-295), a Hamar-English wordlist of
about 1,300 entries (pp. 297-318), a reverse English-Hamar list (pp. 319-
332), a bibliography and a short subject index (pp. 333-342). The work is
based on data collected during a total of nine months of fieldwork
(2013/2014) from 14 native speakers and a corpus of 50 texts.

SUMMARY: After the introduction, chapter 2 deals with the Hamar sound
system, the consonant and vowel inventories, syllable and word structure,
stress and tone, and numerous (morpho)phonological processes.
Chapter 3 (“Nouns”) is a description of the intricate gender and number system and the semantic and pragmatic values associated with masculine and feminine gender and plural number morphemes. Two subsections of chapter 3 deal with nominal derivation and adjectives.

Chapter 4 (“Pronouns and pronominal clitics”) discusses personal, possessive, reflexive and demonstrative pronouns as well as the non-pronominal restrictive (‘alone’) and inclusive (‘too, also’) morphemes. Unlike all other SO languages, Hamar has a 6-form pronoun system (1SG, 2SG, 3M = 3PL, 3F, 1PL, 2PL), where the opposition between 3rd person masculine and plural is neutralised.

Chapter 5 is more eclectic, assembling information on various “other word classes”, i.e. locational adverbs, body part nouns, temporal and manner adverbs, ideophones, and cardinal and ordinal numerals. It contains, among other things, a notable description of counting gestures (p. 128).

Chapter 6 (“Verbs”) presents a partial description of the verbal morphology, namely an analysis of derivational mechanisms (causative, passive and non-productive morphology) and a brief overview of pronominal subject marking on verbs. Verb forms are divided into three types: (i) “uninflected paradigms”, i.e. invariant forms (e.g. General Declarative and Perfect) that cannot host subject proclitics but only combine with independent subject pronouns, (ii) verb forms with proclitic subject agreement (e.g. Perfective and Imperfective) and (iii) (true) inflected paradigms (e.g. Present Negative and Past Negative), in which portmanteau suffixes mark subject agreement, tense/aspect, mood and polarity. Petrollino is able to disprove Bender’s (2000) claim about the “near-absence” of person and number marking on Hamar verbs.

Chapter 7 (“Basic syntax”) is heterogeneous, bringing together a summary of word order rules at the clause and NP levels, a discussion of the discourse functions of gender and number morphemes, a description of the forms and usages of core case forms as well as an analysis of the marking patterns of two types of passive construction. In this chapter, we learn, among other things, that Hamar is head-final on the clause level but predominately head-initial on the NP level, where all modifiers apart from genitive nouns follow the head noun. Hamar is a nominative-accusative language, but only feminine nouns make an obligatory distinction between subject and non-subject forms. These are characterised by a morpheme -n labelled “oblique”, as this -n-form is used for direct and indirect objects and as the base to which non-core case markers attach. Unlike many other Ethiopian languages, Hamar does not have a *marked* nominative case system. The feminine non-subject form has a wide range of functions, but it is used neither as the citation nor as the predicate form; the nominative cannot be derived from it. Masculine and plural
nouns do not distinguish between subject and non-subject forms. A pragmatically determined, phrasal morpheme -dan, labelled “accusative”, can explicitly mark an NP of any gender/number as being in object function. As for the morpheme -n – it remains unclear whether this element is homophonous with the feminine oblique or a functional extension of the latter – it is shown to be a “relational marker” in various grammatical domains, whose functional commonalities are not readily apparent.

Chapter 8 (“Syntax of the noun phrase”) addresses agreement phenomena in the NP (§8.1), the formation and use of non-core cases (§8.2), the encoding of nominal and possessive modifiers (§8.3), the formation of relative clauses (§8.4), and mechanisms of conjunction and disjunction (§8.5). Hamar is shown to have an unusually elaborate system of non-core cases, which includes, among other things, the dative -na for recipients, beneficiaries, the source of ‘run’ and the standard of comparative constructions. The so-called “affective” case, -xal ~ -kal, marks locations (‘at somebody’s place’), possessors in predicative possession, and experiencers. The instrumental -ka ~ -xa marks instruments, points in time and places passed by (perlative) and is clearly distinct from the comitative case -be ~ -bet ~ -bette. In addition, Hamar has seven locative(-only) cases to mark static and dynamic locations, e.g. the inessive case -r for a containment relation and a dedicated ablative -rra. Finally, the genitive -sa marks possessors and other nominal modifiers. The functional difference between genitive and NN constructions remains unclear. The section on relative clauses (§8.4) includes a discussion of the morphology of relative verbs, which are shown to be true participles agreeing in gender and number with their head noun (p. 201). Regretably, Petrollino overlooks many interesting aspects of relativisation, such as the fact that Hamar seems to have internally headed relative clauses (cf. (57b) and (58) on p. 203). It would be interesting to know which grammatical functions the head noun can have inside the relative clause (see Keenan & Comrie’s 1977 accessibility hierarchy). The final section of chapter 8 includes information on a variety of NP and sentential coordination strategies and deals with the comitative morpheme as NP coordinator (‘and’), the inclusive morpheme -l as intersentential coordinator (‘both ... and’) and the interrogative disjunctive coordinator -mo ‘or’.

In spite of its name, chapter 9 (“Simple clauses”) is predominately an outline of Hamar verbal morphology and thus resumes the discussion of the verbal structure that was interrupted in chapter 6. For independent sentence-final verb forms, Petrollino makes a primary distinction between simple and complex predicates (§9.1). Discussion of subordinate verb forms is postponed to chapter 10. In chapter 9, Petrollino sketches a
complex TAM system with a multitude of simple and periphrastic verb
forms. The different verb forms are formed through suffixation or
cliticisation, stem reduplication and auxiliation; furthermore, the position
of TAM morphemes and the obligatory or optional presence/absence of
subject clitics and their position determine the different TAM values. This
results in no less than nine simple verb forms (Imperative, General
Declarative, Present/Jussive, Future, Intentional Future, Perfect,
Perfective, Imperfective, Narrative) and eight periphrastic independent
verb forms, the latter consisting of a dependent verb form plus an
auxiliary. Auxiliaries originate from existential verbs, ‘want’, ‘think’,
‘stay’ and ‘stop’. The remainder of chapter 9 discusses the affirmative,
non-interrogative copula -ne (§9.2) and the existential verb dáa ‘exist;
live’ (§9.3).

Chapter 10 (“Complex clauses”) centres on the morphology and syntax of dependent verb forms and the functions of subordinating suffixes. Hamar is shown to mark converbs for switch-reference (SR). Thus Petrollino’s description fills a gap in our knowledge of the geographic spread of SR in Ethiopia (see Treis 2012 where Hamar could not be taken into account due to a lack of data). The different subject (DS) morpheme -énka (possibly -én-ka historically) is cognate with DS morphemes in North Omotic (NO); see, for example, -ém in Maale (Azeb 2000). The three-converb system of Hamar, where a DS converb is opposed to two same subject converbs (which Petrollino labels “same-event” and “general converb”) parallels the converb system of Baskeet (NO) (Treis 2012). Apart from converb clauses, chapter 10 is concerned with temporal, reason, conditional and purposive clauses, subordinate non-verbal predicates, complement and quotative clauses.

Chapter 11 (“Interrogative clauses”) details the marking of verbs and copulas in content and polar questions and provides a list of question pronouns, while chapter 12 (“Negative clauses”) elaborates on the negation of the copula, the existential, and independent and dependent verbs, supplemented by a discussion of the associated TAM neutralizations.

Chapter 13 presents a valuable critical discussion of the genetic links
between Hamar and the other SO languages, in the light of Petrollino’s
new data. A list of 150 Hamar words is contrasted with data from Kara,
Aari and Dime (§13.3.1), while grammatical morphemes are compared
across SO (§13.3.2, §13.3.4, §13.3.5). Following up on Zaborski (2004),
the SO pronoun systems are compared to those of selected Nilo-Saharan
languages, NO languages and Ongota. While the tight genetic links
between the SO languages are clearly visible both in the lexicon and the
grammar, the commonalities with NO are still difficult to spot (but see
cognate DS converb markers). Thanks to Petrollino’s description it will be
possible to evaluate the relations between SO and NO more systematically in the future. Petrollino does not seem to subscribe to the Nilo-Saharan hypothesis of SO and considers similarities in the pronoun systems to be the result of language contact (p. 285).

EVALUATION: Unfortunately, Petrollino's monograph is not easy to read because of the way the information is organised and a number of rather opaque analyses. The organisation of the grammar is not very reader-friendly and the composition of the individual chapters often unintuitive (see especially §5 and §7). Admittedly, given the linear nature of a grammar, not all information that belongs together can always be presented together, but Petrollino unnecessarily splits up the description of certain grammatical domains and distributes them across the entire book in a way that is not obviously motivated by the structure of Hamar. The noun chapter (§3) includes a partial analysis of the gender and number system but does not discuss case. Case morphology is instead described in §7.4 of "Basic syntax", as far as core (/syntactic) cases are concerned, and in §8.2 of "Syntax of the noun phrase" [sic!], as far as non-core (/semantic) cases are concerned. The discussion of the functions of gender and number morphemes that was begun in chapter 3 is picked up in §7.3 of the "Basic syntax" chapter with information on the discourse functions of these morphemes. The presentation of demonstratives is spread across two chapters (§4.5 "Demonstrative pronouns" and §5.1 "Locational adverbs"), without clarifying the formal and functional similarities (or differences) of the forms given there. The grammar lacks a chapter dedicated to verbal morphology. Instead, information on verbal derivation is found in chapter 6 ("Verbs"); the TAM and subject agreement morphology of main verbs is laid out in chapter 9 ("Simple clauses") and that of converbs and most other subordinate verb forms in chapter 10 ("Complex clauses"), while the morphology of relative verbs is already sketched in chapter 8 ("Syntax of the noun phrase"). Interrogative and negative verb forms are given in §11.2.3 and §12.3, respectively. Thus the reader never gets a coherent picture of the formal relations between the different verb forms (or paradigms). Apart from these organisational issues, some of the proposed analyses are lacking in rigour. For reasons of space, this review addresses problematic aspects only in the analyses of the phonology and the verbal morphology.

Hamar is shown to have a tricky sound system. However, the complexity is not due to its phoneme inventory, which is not particularly complex: 26 (+1 marginal) consonant phonemes including 5 glottalised stops, seven vowels and five diphthongs. Rather it is due to the defective distribution of many consonants (only 10 out of 26 occur word-finally), the limited phonematicity of gemination (only 14 out of 26 consonants have a simplex-geminate contrast), the unclear phoneme status of some
consonants and vowels, and the numerous (morpho)phonological rules, some of which apply fairly generally while others target only very restricted grammatical contexts. While an easier solution to the (morpho) phonological problems is not immediately apparent, I have the impression that the description of the sound system does not yet do justice to the language and it might be possible to formulate more general rules (or motivate the postulated rules) with a larger database. Furthermore, some of the proposed phonological analyses are questionable. The phoneme /p/ is said to have two allophones [p] and [φ] – which is also a common phenomenon in other southwestern Ethiopian languages. For unclear reasons, Petrollino introduces this allophonic variation into the phonemic transcription of her data, representing phonetic [p] by *p* and [φ] by *f* (p. 9). Consequently, throughout the book, lexemes are arbitrarily written with *p* or *f*: *shúpo* or *shúfo* ‘shadow’, *eep-* or *eef-* ‘cry’, *aapá* or *aafá* ‘eye’, *durp-* or *durf-* ‘be fat’. These concerns notwithstanding, Petrollino does make an interesting observation about the Hamar consonant system, namely the existence of a “breathy-voiced glottal transition” (p. 21), transcribed as /h/ [hí], word-initially before /a/. This is not only reminiscent of the breathy vowels of Aari, as Petrollino notes, but also of unusual “h-phonemes” in Ometo languages, which all have a marginal status and sometimes contrast with plain /h/ (see e.g. Treis & Werth 2014 on Baskeet). The glottal fricatives in southwestern Ethiopia would definitely merit an in-depth phonetic study in the future.

Neither is Petrollino’s analysis of the 7-vowel system with phonemic length contrasts entirely convincing. The phonemic status of the mid-low vowels /e/ and /ɔ/ remains questionable, as they are mostly the result of (morpho-)phonological processes (p. 29). It is also unclear why originally long vowels that are shortened before consonant clusters are considered to be (phonemically) short although they remain phonetically longer than word-initial short vowels (p. 36).

In §2.4, Petrollino argues “that Hamar has two co-existing, yet *independent* [prosodic] systems which can be analysed in terms of stress and tone” (p. 40; emphasis mine). Stress, which is realised as increased duration, high pitch and loudness on one syllable in every word, is lexically distinctive in nouns, see e.g. *átti* ‘bird’ vs. *attí* ‘fermented sorghum’ and *ánqasi* ‘bee’ vs. *anqási* ‘lamb’ (p. 41), and is also used to distinguish grammatical forms in the verbal system, e.g. Negative Past vs. Negative Present (p. 48). Petrollino’s claim that Hamar is also a tonal language is entirely based on the observation that certain grammatical forms are realised with a word-final falling tone, e.g. masculine nouns *qása* ‘louse’ > *qasá* ‘louse:M’ (p. 42). This falling tone is analysed as a toneme, contrasting with a default level toneme. However, it is by no means clear that Hamar is a tone language. The word-final vowels with
"falling tone", e.g. â, could satisfactorily be analysed as stressed bisegmental double vowels (áa), resulting from the coalescence of two vowel phonemes, the second of which is usually a separate morpheme. Three pieces of evidence for the plausibility of such an alternative analysis can be found in the description itself. Firstly, Petrollino herself observes that vowels such as â are realised phonetically long (p. 42). Secondly, Hamar does not seem to have final long vowels with level tone. Thirdly, some vowels ending with falling "tone" are in free variation with diphthongs, see e.g. *qoléi* [exist.not] (p. 166) ~ *qolê* [exist.not] (p. 110) and *wuc'-ê* ~ *wuc'-ái* [drink-PRES.NEG.3] 'he doesn't/she doesn't/they don't drink' (p. 261).

The author presents a complex TAM system with altogether nine simple and eight periphrastic paradigms (or invariant verb forms) used in affirmative main clauses, nine subordinate verb forms, five interrogative paradigms and two negative paradigms. However, the presentation of the verbal system is difficult to understand for several reasons. Sometimes the description and the examples are in contradiction with each other. On other occasions, the analysis is not sufficiently illustrated with *contextualised* examples. The mobile imperfective and perfective morphemes are interpreted as being suffixal in some verb forms but as enclitic or proclitic in others. In addition, Petrollino treats some formally identical morphemes as homophonous (e.g. 2SG Imperative –á vs. stem formative –á) and others as polysemous (e.g. Present and Jussive –é are not differentiated, both being glossed as PRES, and are jointly opposed to the 2PL Imperative –é). Given my insufficient knowledge of Hamar I do not want to question these decisions but convincing arguments for keeping them are lacking.

Now let us turn to the postulated TAM values of simple affirmative main verb forms. Petrollino distinguishes nine TAM values: Imperative (2SG vs. 2PL), General Declarative (invariant, double stem), Present / Jussive (invariant, subject clitics obligatory) (1), Future (invariant, double stem, subject clitics obligatory) (2), Intentional Future (only 1SG), Perfect (invariant), Perfective (invariant, subject clitics optional), Imperfective (invariant, subject clitics optional) (3) and Narrative (invariant).

This list shows us, among other things, that not all verb forms are marked for person, that both aspect and tense are marked morphologically, and that in two verb forms, General Declarative and Future, the verb stem is expressed twice, see *kalsh[á]* 'help' in (2). Not all TAM values are defined by the occurrence of a certain TAM morpheme (e.g. the Narrative is marked by the narrative morpheme –b), but Petrollino associates some TAM values with a combination of TAM markers and a certain morpheme order, e.g. the Future (2) is marked by a sequence of two verb stems, the first of which carries subject agreement and the
imperfective morpheme, the second of which carries the present morpheme.

(1) Present (p. 212)

kánki-xa wo=da=yi?-é

car-INS 1PL=IPFV-go-PRES

'We go by car.'

(2) Future (p. 213)

ínta haan

1SG 2SG.ACC

kalshá=i=da

HELP=1SG=IPFV

kalsh-é

help-PRES

'I will help you (now, later, one day).'

(3) Imperfective (p. 215)

t'álian ká-te

Italians PRX.SP-LOC

qaldó-n-te

lap-F.OBL-LOC

qaná-da

hit-IPFV

'The Italians used to hit here on the laps.'

It is problematic that no terminological or orthographic distinction is made between, on the one hand, present, perfective and imperfective morphemes, which occur in various verb forms, often in combination (cf. (2)), and, on the other hand, constructions that express the TAM values such as Present, Perfective and Imperfective. This review differentiates these two usages by means of capitalisation. It is also unclear why some morpheme combinations are interpreted as encoding separate TAM values, while others are not. For example, the perfect morpheme alone and perfect + copula marking (p. 214) are both considered to encode Perfect.

Petrollino describes the function of the Present as referring to "actions which take place at the moment of speaking" (p. 212). The examples throughout the book, however, show that this might not be a sufficient, and may even be an erroneous characterisation of this verb form. The Present is seen to express futurity (ex. (30), p. 145), habituality (ex. (6b), p. 212) in the present and even habituality in the past (ex. (27d), p. 241). In contrast, the verb form called "Future" is used in procedural contexts – see Text 3 about the preparation of goat hides where the Future form is used five times as the main verb form – where the General Declarative would have been expected if Petrollino's description of the latter verb form is adequate (p. 211). The Future also occurs in habitual contexts in the present (ex. p. 242, ex. 29c). So there is good reason to believe that the choice between the single-stem Present and the double-stem Future verb form is not determined by tense and that Petrollino's analysis needs to be revised. It is also unfortunate that the Present tense and Jussive mood, which are both marked by -é, are lumped together, although they are structurally distinct in the first and second person.

The function of the Perfect is characterised as referring to "actions viewed as already completed at the time of reference. The completed action might have present relevance" (p. 214). Petrollino continues: "In
the perfective the emphasis is put on the whole event, whereas in the perfect [...] the emphasis is on the end point of the action.” The language-internal functional differences between the Perfect and the Perfective are not further discussed with textual examples. It should also be noted that Petrollino usually translates the Hamar Perfect with the English Past tense and that the animal tales in the appendix contain several Perfect but no Perfective main verb form. In addition, the difference between the Perfect and the Narrative is not explored.

Whereas the TAM system in affirmative main clauses distinguishes tense and aspect values, the analysis reduces the system to a binary opposition between Present vs. Past in relative clauses (p. 201ff), content questions (p. 247ff) and negative clauses (p. 261ff). (Note that main verbs have no Past value.) As for relative markers on verbs, they are analysed as portmanteau morphemes expressing gender/number and tense. It would be worth exploring whether the two relative paradigms could not be interpreted as reflecting an Imperfective vs. Perfective aspectual difference. The Past Relative (/Perfective) of ‘be.angry’ and ‘sit’ are translated as ‘who is angry’ (p. 201) and ‘who is seated’ (p. 201), respectively – which is reminiscent of the behaviour of change of state verbs ('be(come) angry, sit (down)') in many Ethiopian languages with an aspect opposition, where the Perfective expresses a state resulting from a change and the Imperfective an ongoing change of state.

The pragmatic explanations for certain constructional or morpho-
logical variants often appear to be *ad hoc*, as, for example, when the
impersonal passive of transitive verbs is said to have a “backgrounding
effect on the event expressed by the verb” (p. 147), or when passivised
intransitive verbs are claimed to “highlight the event expressed by the
verb” (p. 147). What is also missing is morphosyntactic definitions for
the postulated word classes, especially for adjectives and adverbs.
Petrollino does not clearly spell out the criteria for considering certain
morphemes to be affixes, others to be clitics, and a third type to be affixes
in one context and clitics in another. For unclear reasons, the restrictive
=mal ‘only’ is considered to be an enclitic, while the inclusive -l ‘also’ is
regarded as a suffix (p. 109f); it is equally unclear why case and
gender/number morphemes are considered enclitic on pronouns
(personal: p. 103f, possessive: p. 106, reflexive: p. 107) but suffixal on
nouns. Some terminological choices are debatable: Petrollino speaks of
“paradigms” even when a verb form is invariant; see the “uninflected
paradigms” on p. 150. I would have preferred the term “proximative”
(Heine 1994) over the label “inceptive” for the verb form expressing ‘be
about to V’, and the term “additive” (Forker 2016) over “inclusive” for
the -l-morpheme marking addition and coordination. The label “realis”
for the complex verb form expressing ‘almost V-ed (but then didn’t V)’ is
misleading; “action narrowly averted” (Kuteva 1998) would be an alternative. In the glosses, the difference between pronoun I and II forms – to which ample reference is made in the description – should have been indicated. Similarly, the glosses should have noted the distinction between the present markers in content and polar interrogative (INT) clauses, -é and -ó (probably: <\* PRES -é + INT -u), which are both glossed PRES. INT.

The book contains a fair number of typos, grammatical errors and errors of word choice, including, to cite but a few examples, “Dhaasanec” (p. 1), “Dhaasanc” (p. 206, 231) > “Dhaasanac”, *oonéè* (p. 44, figure) > *oɔnɛ́è*, “in the shadow” > “in the shade” (p. 116), “child” > “1SG” for the gloss of ínta (p. 120), “ordinal number ‘one’” > “cardinal number ‘one’” (p. 131), “illegal consonant cluster” > “illicit consonant cluster” (p. 139), “comitatve” > “comitative” (p. 177), “Kenya-ABL-LOC” > “Kenya-ABL-COP” (p. 205, ex. 62c), *qóle* (4a) > *qóle* (19a) (p. 253), “bóna *adj***” > “bóna *n***” (p. 299). More references to earlier works on Hamar and to descriptions of related languages in the individual chapters would also have been welcome.

These critical observations are not meant to diminish the overall value of this highly recommended work, which was completed in the time frame of a PhD project and under challenging field conditions. Petrollino’s Hamar grammar takes us a great step forward in the description of the still little known Omotic languages. It lays the foundation for future comparative studies on the genetic relations between SO and NO and, together with the natural text corpus on which the description is based, it constitutes a substantial source and a valuable starting point for future in-depth studies of specific grammatical issues.

## Abbreviations

<table><tr><td>ABL</td><td>ablative</td><td>NEG</td><td>negation</td></tr><tr><td>ACC</td><td>accusative</td><td>NO</td><td>North Omotic</td></tr><tr><td>COP</td><td>copula</td><td>OBL</td><td>oblique</td></tr><tr><td>DS</td><td>different subject</td><td>PL</td><td>plural</td></tr><tr><td>F</td><td>feminine</td><td>PRES</td><td>present</td></tr><tr><td>INS</td><td>instrumental</td><td>PRX</td><td>proximal</td></tr><tr><td>INT</td><td>interrogative</td><td>SG</td><td>singular</td></tr><tr><td>IPFV</td><td>imperfective</td><td>SO</td><td>South Omotic</td></tr><tr><td>LOC</td><td>locative</td><td>SP</td><td>specific locational</td></tr><tr><td>M</td><td>masculine</td><td>SR</td><td>switch-reference</td></tr></table>

## Works cited

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BENDER M. Lionel, 2000, *Comparative Morphology of the Omotic Languages*, Müchen, Lincom Europa.
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FORKER Diana, 2014, “Toward a Typology for Additive Markers”, *Lingua*, n° 180, p. 69-100.

HEINE Bernd, 1994, “On the Genesis of Aspect in African Languages: The Proximative”, *Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on Historical Issues in African Linguistics*, Berkeley, Berkeley Linguistics Society, p. 35-46.

KEENAN Edward L. and COMRIE Bernard, 1977, “Noun Phrase Accessibility and Universal Grammar”, *Linguistic Inquiry*, Vol. 8, N. 1, p. 63-99.

KUTEVA Tania, 1998, “On Identifying an Evasive Gram: Action Narrowly Averted”, *Studies in Language*, Vol. 22, N. 1, p. 113-160.

LYDALL Jean, 1976, “Hamer”, in M.L. Bender (ed.), *The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia*, East Lansing, African Studies Center, Michigan State University, p. 393-438.

LYDALL Jean, 1988, “Gender, Number and Size in Hamar, in Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst and Fritz Serzisko (eds.), *Cushitic and Omotic. Papers from the International Symposium on Cushitic and Omotic Languages, Cologne, January 6-9, 1986*, Hamburg, Buske, p. 77-90.

MOGES Yigezu, 2005, “Some Observations on the Pronouns of Hamar: a Comparative Perspective”, *Cushitic-Omotic Studies 2004*, p. 113-132.

SISAY Binyam and MOGES Yigezu, 2014. “Notes on Copula Constructions in Hamar”, *Studies in Ethiopian Languages*, n° 3, p. 71-81.

TREIS Yvonne, 2012, “Switch-Reference and Omotic-Cushitic Language Contact in Southwest Ethiopia”, *Journal of Language Contact*, Vol. 5, p. 80-116.

TREIS Yvonne and WERTH Alexander, 2014, “Notes from the Field: Baskeet Phonological Sketch and Digital Wordlist”, *Language Documentation and Conservation*, Vol. 8, p. 810-832.

ZABORSKI Andrzej, 2004, “West Cushitic – A Genetic Reality”, *Lingua Posnaaniensis*, N. 46, p. 173-186.