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This page pertains to UD version 2.

Case: case

Values: Abl Ben Ins Loc Mal

In Amharic, Case is a lexical feature of adpositions and describes the case meaning that the adposition contributes to the phrase in which it appears.

Not all Amharic adpositions are annotated with a Case feature. Some adpositions that have the feature are incorporated in a verb form on the surface; they are treated as separate syntactic words in UD and may depend directly on the verb stem.

Incorporated prepositions have been also described as applicative morphemes that make the verb agree with a prepositional argument (in addition to the agreement with the subject). This means that the prepositional argument becomes a core object and the valency of the verb is altered.

Ben: benefactive

The benefactive case corresponds to the English preposition for. While in other languages the benefactive case may cover also actions whose result is not advantageous for the person affected, in Amharic this case is used only for good things, and the bad ones are marked differently (see below).

Examples

Mal: malefactive

Like benefactive, the malefactive denotes an entity (person) that is affected by an action in which it does not participate directly (neither as the actor nor as the patient). However, contrary to the benefactive, here the effect of the action is disadvantageous for the person.

Examples

Loc: locative

Some applicatives (incorporated prepositions) have locative meaning. This type is less frequent and less frequently discussed in the literature than the others.

Examples

Ins: instrumental

In some contexts the preposition has the interpretation of the instrumental.

Examples

Abl: ablative

The preposition ከ / signifies the direction from some point.

Examples


Case in other languages: [am] [apu] [arr] [bej] [bg] [cs] [el] [eme] [en] [es] [ess] [et] [fi] [ga] [gn] [grc] [gub] [hu] [hy] [ka] [kmr] [koi] [kpv] [ky] [mdf] [myu] [myv] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tl] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj]