Morphological similarity and contact: Plurals, Punctuals and Pluractionals in Konso and Gawwada (Cushitic, Southwest Ethiopia)

Konso and Gawwada, Cushitic languages spoken in southwest Ethiopia, share several linguistic and cultural features which can be accounted for through intensive contact. One of these linguistic features is the extensive use of reduplication in both nominal and verbal morphology; within the latter, the presence of Punctual and Pluractional verbal extensions seems to be unique to Konso and Gawwada (and their closest linguistic cognates, the Konsoid and Dullay groups of East Cushitic). Reduplication of the last consonant of a root is used in nouns and verbs with two very different, and actually opposite, semantic interpretations: the gemination of a nominal root’s final consonant yields a Plurative and denotes an increase in the number or quantity of entities; in verbs, the same pattern is used in the Punctual derivation in order to express a decrease (in the number of actions or of objects, or still a reduction in the strength and time involved). We argue that, within a situation of very old and deep mutual contact, the direction of borrowing was from Dullay to Konsoid, and this because of the absence in Oromo, a language closely related to Konso, does not show any instance of Punctuality and Pluractionality in verbs, and also because these phenomena are more widely applicable in Gawwada than in Konso.