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

Abstract

This 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.