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The jussive in Chaha

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Wolf Leslau
Wolf Leslau*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

The Semitic imperfect as represented by Arabic has three patterns with respect to the vowel of the 2nd radical: (ya)ktal, (ya)ktul, (ya)ktil; thus, yašrabu ‘he drinks’, yaktubu ‘he writes’, yanzilu ‘he descends’. In Hebrew, these patterns are (yi)ktal, (yi)ktol, (yi)ktel, with the vowels a, o, e respectively; thus, ‘he will study’, yišmor ‘he will watch’, ‘he will sit’. In the Ethiopian group, Geez (or Old Ethiopie) is known as the only language that had two patterns, namely corresponding to yaktal of Semitic, and going back to Semitic yaktul and yaktil, with the reduction of the short u and i of the 2nd radical to . These forms, however, are those of the jussive, not the imperfect indicative as in the other Semitic languages. The Geez jussive goes back to a perfect kätlä, the jussive to a perfect kätälä; thus, perfect läbsä ‘he put on a dress’, jussive perfect nägärä ‘he said’, jussive .

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 40 , Issue 1: January-March , March 1964 , pp. 53 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © 1964 by Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 The imperfect indicative in Geez is , with a syllabic structure different from that of Arabic and Hebrew.

2 In Arabic, too, there are three forms of the perfect: katala, katila, katula; in Hebrew the forms are kåtal, kåtel, kåtol. The correlation between the vocalization of the perfect and the jussive in Arabic and in Hebrew, however, is not regular.

3 This is undoubtedly also the case in Eža and Endegeň, other dialects belonging to the Western group, but I did not investigate the verbs of these languages.

4 See JAOS 71.222–3 (1951).

5 Rassegna di studi etiopici 10.86–7 (1951).

6 Rassegna di studi etiopici 10.85–98 (1951).

7 One way of expressing the future in Chaha is by the jussive plus šä, but the vowel of the prefix is .

8 For an attempt to describe this verbal class, see Rassegna di studi etiopici 10.97–8. See also the bibliography on this verbal class in Semitic in general, ibid.

9 H. J. Polotsky, BSL 39.138 ff. (1938); W. Leslau, Word 4.44–5 (1948).

10 In Geez the perfect räkäbä has the jussive .

11 From the Semitic and Geez root lmd. In Geez, too, the verb lämädä has the jussive .

12 Root ; cf. Soddo ‘be blind’.

13 Root , originally ‘split’, hence a transitive verb.