A A Verb morphology of Dube

Abstract

The Dube language is spoken by a small group of people along the Wabi-Shebelle River in southeastern Ethiopia. There is a high degree of language shift among the native speakers in addition to the language receiving little scholarly attention so far. This article describes the verb morphology of this endangered language. Dube has verb roots to which both inflectional and derivational morphemes are attached. From the inflectional point of view, Dube uses prefixes, suffixes and circumfix. The inflectional category is morphologically marked in the tense-aspect, person and mood domains. The circumfix marks future tense (future imperfective). Simple imperfective (present continuous) is morphologically marked. Future and simple imperfective for second person plural and third person plural are marked by a prefix. In the simple Imperfective, the second and the third person plural forms have the same tense marker morpheme. The perfective and future are marked with -en and -oo, respectively. The order of morphemes is also interesting in that the future marking morpheme follows the person marker in the singular, but precedes the person marker in the plural. The mood of the verbs has no imperative marker. The imperative distinguishes number, but not gender. The singular addressee is not morphologically marked on the verb. However, the plural addressee is marked with a suffix. The jussive is formed with prefix. Verb derivations include causativization, passivization, reflexives/reciprocals and frequentatives. Direct causative is formed by adding the suffix -siyy to the verb root. Passive is marked by prefix.la-. Dube verbs show frequantative through reduplication of the first syllable of the verb root. Inchoative verbs are derived from adjectives by adding suffix –aad.

Keywords: - Dube, verb morphology, inflection, derivation