Grammatica introduttiva della lingua amarica

Graziano Savà

doi:10.6093/978-88-6719-255-7

Grammatica introduttiva della lingua amarica

Authors

Graziano Savà

University of Naples L'Orientale

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/978-88-6719-255-7

Keywords:

Synopsis

Editore: UniorPress

Collana: Studi Africanistici - Serie Etiopica, 11

Pagine: 168

Lingua: Italiana

NBN: http://nbn.depositolegale.it/urn:nbn:it:unina-29526

Abstract: The main idea behind the publication of an introductory grammar of Amharic in Italian is to facilitate the approach to Amharic by those Italian speakers that have to do with Ethiopia. The same is for University students who embark into the discovery of Ethiopia and its main language. The grammar appears straightforward and easy to comprehend. It is appropriate for those who want to approach the Amharic language and then go into deeper knowledge by using other existing tools, all in English. Indeed, the only grammars in Italian have been published almost one century ago and it is basically not possible to find a copy. With scientific and methodological rigour, the Grammatica introduttiva della lingua amarica, fills, therefore, and important gap in the Italian studies on Amharic.

The grammar is structures into 11 chapters. An introduction on the grammar itself, that also presents some basic information on Amharic, is followed by a detailed description of phonology and orthography of the Amharic language. The orthography may seem difficult, but it is interesting and fascinating as it makes use of a system that is exclusively Ethiopian. It is based on syllabic characters with a basic consonantal character modified to indicate the vowels. This is in chapter 1. Chapter 2 contains the explanation of two basic concepts concerning words: formation and order in the sentence. What follows is five chapters on, respectively, five different nominal classes: 3 nouns, 4 pronouns, 5 adjectives, 6 numerals and 7 adverbs. More or less, therefore, the first part of the grammar is devoted to Amharic sounds, script and nominal structure. The second part is devoted to verbs, sentences and expressions. The complexity of the Amharic verbal system resulted in that the two chapters on verbs are the richest and most articulated of the grammar. The first one, chapter 8, which is relatively the bulkiest, is devoted to verbal inflection, that is, the verbal forms that indicate aspect (that is, the temporal structure of the verbs, that for Italian would be time, but that it is different in Amharic), gender and number. The second one, chapter 9, is devoted to derivation, that is the modification of the basic verbal meaning in order to create causative, passive, etc. Chapter 10, on sentences, focusses on the syntax of coordination and subordination. It was also decided to add chapter 11, which displays the most common expressions in the colloquial use of Amharic. The grammar closes with an appendix on the Ethiopian calendar, deemed to be useful in consideration of the differences respect to the European one, and a glossary containing all the words found in the grammar.

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Author Biography

Graziano Savà, University of Naples L'Orientale

Graziano Savà (PhD Leiden, The Netherlands) is a linguist specialised on Amharic and in the description and documentation of minority and endangered languages of the Horn of Africa. He is the author of the only grammar of Ts’amakko, a Cushitic endangered language of Southern Ethiopia, and he has documented other little-known languages of Ethiopia, such as Ongota, Bayso and Haro. Besides the Grammatica introduttiva della lingua amarica, on Amharic he has published a Dizionarietto delle parole italiane in lingua amarica (“Small dictionary of Italian words in the Amharic language”), in the volume edited by Vincenzo Latronico and Armin Linke (2012) Narciso delle colonie, un'altro viaggio in Etiopia and he took care of the chapter Amarico of the volume La classe plurilingue edited by Ilaria Fiorentini, Chiara Gianollo e Nicola Grandi (2020). Moreover, he collaborates with the Centro Lingue Estere of the Carabinieri and the Scuola Lingue Estere of the Army in the training in Amharic of soldiers that are in charge at the Italian Embassy in Addis Ababa. Savà is also the author of historical linguistics studies and dealt with language standardization and codeswitching. He is presently a postdoc fellow (assegnista di ricerca) at the University of Naples l’Orientale with a research project aiming at the documentation of Nara, a Nilo-Saharan language (Eritrea-Sudan).