2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Descriptive and Sociolinguistic Studies on the Cushitic and Omotic Languages of Ethiopia
| Project/Area Number |
13571039
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 海外学術 |
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| Research Field |
言語学・音声学
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| Research Institution | Kanazawa University |
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Principal Investigator |
TSUGE Yoichi Kanazawa University, Faculty of Letters, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (50092276)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KOWAKI Mitsuo Kumamoto University, International Student Center, Professor, 留学生センター, 教授 (30136030)
INUI Hideyuki Yamaguchi University, Faculty of Humanities, Associate Professor, 人文学部, 助教授 (10241754)
NAKANO Akio Teikyo Heisei University, Faculty of Medical Science for Health, Professor, 健康メディカル学部, 教授 (70014470)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2001 – 2004
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| Keywords | Omotic languages / Cushitic languages / minority languages / Ethiopia / language contact / basic vocabulary |
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| Research Abstract |
1.We gathered basic data of the following Cushitic and Omotic languages of Ethiopia during this period : Aari, Dime, Basketo, Ganjule, Wolaytta, Konso, Agaw, and Xamtanga. The speakers of many of these languages are few in number and most of them still lack reliable vocabulary data and preliminary grammatical description. As to Aari, Konso, Basketo and Wolaytta we could extend our research to the grammatical aspects of respective languages. Such basic phonological and grammatical data will not only make a solid basis for the future investigation of these lesser studied languages themselves, but also be useful for the comparative studies of the Cushitic and Omotic languages.
Throughout these years we have made close ties with Ethiopian scholars, through which we have the privilege of having their contributions in our report.
2.As to the data, we are in a process of digitizing them to make them available to the scholars worldwide. Some of them will be made public on the web site at Yamaguchi University. We have also made a cd-rom which contains sound files of 262 basic words of Aari, Basketo, Konso and Wolaytta, which can be consulted not only by specialists but also be used as an educational material in such classes as the phonetics or field linguistics.
3.We have also collected information of the bibliographical data of the publications on such languages as listed above.
4.While we have almost fulfilled our first objective of collecting basic data for the description of such languages, as to the second objective of making sociolinguistic research, we could not done enough work and yield expected results. We will reconsider our aim and methods for the future research.
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