A Comparative Study of Some Aspects of Verb Morphology between Mees’aatso and Gok’aatso Dialects of Dawurotso

Abstract

This study is designed to assess some verb morphology features of the Mees’aatso and Gok’aatso dialects comparatively. The methods implemented in data collection are elicitation forms from the speech of native speakers of the two dialects; the data were transcribed phonetically by using the convention of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Both descriptive and comparative approaches are used to find out the dialectal variation in the two dialects. Dawurotso verb morphology incorporates both inflectional and derivational. Mees’aatso and Gok’aatso verbs are inflected for person, aspect, mood, and negation forms. Grammatical categories are marked by infixing or suffixing a morpheme to the stem. Verbs inflect to mark mood types such as Imperative, jussive, and interrogative form. The markers in the Mees'aatso variant for person organized as follows: [-ai] indicates first person singular; [-a] shows second person singular; [-au] indicates third person singular feminine; [-e:] shows third person singular masculine; [-o:] indicates first person plural; [-i:ta] indicates second person plural; and [-i:no] implies third person plural. In contrast, the markers in the Gok'aatso variant are suffixed as [-oso] for first person plural, [-e:ta] for second person plural, [-ais] for first person singular, [-asa] for second person singular, [-ausu] for third person singular feminine, [-e:se] for third person singular masculine, and [-o:so] for first person plural. Under in the derivational morphology, the Mees’aatso and Gok’aatso dialects are indicate the verb stems in the causative; suffix [is:] attaches both for the Mees’aatso and Gok’aatso variant, in the passive [-etˢ] attach for Mees’aatso and [et:] stands for Gok’aatso, in the reciprocal the infix [-er-] stands for both the Mees’aatso and Gok’aatso, in the frequentative the suffixes [ ere:tˢ-] stands for Mees’aatso and [-ere:t:-] stands for Gok’aatso, the benefactive suffix [ad:] stands for Mees’aatso and the suffix [as:] attaches Gok’aatso dialect.