Contrastive Analysis Of Lexical Standardization In Amharic And Hadiyya

This dissertation compares lexical standardization in Amharic and Hadiyya. The selectedrnresearch sides were Addis Ababa and the Hadiyya Zone. Language data were gathered fromrntextbooks and dictionaries, which were supplemented by semi-structured interview and focusrngroup discussions.rnThe study found that the overrepresentation of sounds, i.e. /h/, /s/, /s’/ and vowels, became arnproblem of standardization of Amharic spelling. When the writing system for Amharicrndeveloped from the Ge’ez script, it retained unnecessary symbols which caused spellingrnvariation. In Amharic, spelling variation is attested in compounds and loanwords. Regardingrnorthography reform, the addition of graphemes was successful for Amharic and Hadiyya.rnHowever, the proposal for the reduction of extra symbols for Amharic was unsuccessful. ThernRoman-based Hadiyya orthography violates the principle of economy and transfer. Therngemination of digraphs reduces economy while the assignment of different phonetic values tornsome of the Hadiyya and English sounds negatively affects the transfer of reading and writingrnskills. In Hadiyya, the graphemes /ʒ/ and /ɲ/ are overrepresentations.rnAs regards lexical elaboration strategies, language internal and external resources werernextensively used. The strategies of semantic transfer and compounding are predominantly usedrnmethods for lexical elaboration in both languages, while abbreviation and blending are lessrncommon. Comparatively, Hadiyya is more active than Amharic in extensively employingrnsemantic transfer method. Borrowing and loan translations are identified as the most productivernlanguage external means of lexical elaboration in both Amharic and Hadiyya. Amharic andrnHadiyya borrowed words mainly with modifications; unmodified borrowing was rarely found inrnAmharic, but not attested in Hadiyya. In relation to source languages, Amharic and Hadiyyarndepend more on foreign languages, such as English, Arabic, French and Italian, than onrnEthiopian languages. Amharic exploited the genetically related language Ge’ez to enrich itsrnvocabulary, whereas Hadiyya does not exploit related Cushitic languages. Most of the Europeanrnloanwords entered Hadiyya via Amharic. English is used as a source language of loanrntranslations for Amharic while English and Amharic are used as source languages for Hadiyya

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