SPATIAL EXPRESSIONS IN AFAAN OROMOO

Afaan Oromoo, a Lowland East Cushitic language, denotes spatial concepts through demonstratives, adverbs, verbs and adpositions, either alone or accompanied by physical manifestations such as gesture. This chapter discusses Oromo demonstratives, including demonstrative pronouns, determiners and identifiers, which are used to describe spatial expressions in the language. Demonstrative pronouns inflect for number, distingushing singular and plural forms, and they inflect for nominative and absolutive cases. Deictically, demonstratives are always speaker-centered. Proximal and distal forms are phonologically distinguished: /k/ for proximal as in kun/kana ‘this’, and /s/ for distal as in sun/sana ‘this’. The other two classes, determiners and identifiers, have the same phonological and morphological forms as demonstrative pronouns, but they are different in their distribution. I distinguish simple (Ɂasi ‘here’ vs. Ɂaʧʧ(i) ‘there’) and complex forms (Ɂaʧʧas ‘from there to here’, Ɂasirra/Ɂaʧʧirra ‘up here’/’up there’, etc.) deictic adverbs and show that (non-)directional motion verbs and locative deictics play significant roles in expressing spatial concepts.