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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

ፌድወት Fedwet – Linguistic features of an endangered argot among Gurage women

Résumé

Our paper describes the main linguistic features of a secret linguistic variety mainly used by Gurage women, the so-called mʷǝjǝt. They were followers of a former local religious tradition, which flourished until the beginning of the 20th century, but then started to disappear due to the growing influence of Christianity and Islam in the Gurage region. Today, it is only remembered by a few old women. The cultural and sociolinguistic role of the Fedwet variety is discussed in few publications, notably Shack (1966: 133–135); Gabreyesus (1991: 140–145); Sentalem (2012), and particularly Etaferahu (2021), but not much has been known about its linguistic features, except a selective wordlist given in Leslau (1964). Etaferahu (2019) contains a more detailed linguistic description of the Fedwet, but in comparison to another Gurage secret variety used by handcrafters. The current paper will provide an in-depth description and analysis of the Fedwet variety including its lexical, phonological, morphological, and syntactic peculiarities. The data were gathered by elicitation, recording of free texts, and interviews. It will be shown that the Fedwet variety is an argot based on Chaha (Ethiosemitic, Sebat Bet Gurage) which has been manipulated through several processes, including regular morphophonological changes, a number of lexical substitutions, and semantic extensions and changes. References Etaferahu Hailu. 2019. Description of the social varieties used by the Gurage: Fedwet and Fuga. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University (PhD Dissertation). Etaferahu Hailu. 2021. Sociolinguistic functions of the secret language of Gurage females. In Ado Derib, Wasse Gelagay Almaz & Janne Bondi Johannessen (eds.), Grammatical and sociolinguistic aspects of Ethiopian languages, 119–135. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gabreyesus Hailemariam. 1991. The Guragué and their culture. New York, NY: Vantage Press. Leslau, Wolf. 1964. An Ethiopian argot of a Gurage secret society. Journal of African Languages 3. 52–65. Shack, William A. 1966. The Gurage: a people of the ensete culture. London: Oxford University Press. Sentalem Sijja. 2012. የሙየት በዓል አከባበር / jämujät bäʔal ʔakkäbabbär [Celebration of the Mujät commemoration day]. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University (BA Thesis).
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Dates et versions

hal-04091326 , version 1 (08-05-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04091326 , version 1

Citer

Ronny Meyer, Etaferahu Hailu. ፌድወት Fedwet – Linguistic features of an endangered argot among Gurage women. 25. Afrikanistentag: Im/materielles Erbe neu kalibriert, Institut für Afrikanistik, Leipzig University, May 2023, Leipzig, Germany. ⟨hal-04091326⟩
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