Studies in African Languages and Cultures (Dec 2003)
Grammaticalization of the Amharic tense system
Abstract
In my description of grammaticalization patterns leading to the origin of Amharic tense, aspect and modality structures, I will emphasize the realization of complex schemas in Amharic. The idea of complex schemas proposed by Heine1 enlarges the notion of "simple” schemas involving "basic propositional contents characterized by subject-predicate structure typically encoded linguistically as a simple clause” into a structure that ”[...] contains either an additional schema or an additional concept” (Heine 1993: 37). In addition to Heine's Purpose Schema or Evaluative Schema, I would propose a Temporal Relation Schema, precisely speaking - a Simultaneity Schema. Its idea, based mainly on the temporal relation structures of Amharic simultaneity expressions, shows the multi-functionality and productivity of temporal relation schemas in the process of grammaticalization.
