Gender variation across the oromo dialects: a corpus‐based study*

Abstract

AbstractThis study aims to (1) demonstrate the position of the Oromo gender system in Corbett's (1991) typology of gender; (2) illustrate major syntactic gender variation across the Oromo dialects; (3) identify factors that contributed to the gender variation, and (4) illustrate the morphosyntax of the Oromo gender system. The data obtained from the Oromo Speech Corpus shows a high degree of lexical and syntactic variation between the Western‐Northern dialects on the one hand, and the Eastern‐Southern dialects on the other hand. The Western and Northern dialects have shifted from the historically Cushitic phonology‐based gender assignment pattern to the semantic‐based assignment pattern. This shift has resulted in a widespread neutralization of feminine gender markers. The contact between Oromo and the neighboring non‐Cushitic languages contributed to these changes. The study also argues that Kramer's (2015) morphosyntactic approach can be extended to the analysis of Oromo gender system.