--- title: "Internal Grammar in Amharic Place-Names — Little 1978" description: "Research on the grammar of proper names usually looks at how a name behaves as a whole unit in a sentence: no plural, no article, and so on." authors: ["Greta D. Little"] year: 1978 venue: "Names 26" source: "http://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/article/view/865" doi: "10.1179/nam.1978.26.1.3" licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Names)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/little-1978-internal-grammar-amharic-place-names/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/little-1978-internal-grammar-amharic-place-names/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [1978](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1978/) / Internal Grammar in Amharic Place-Names # Internal Grammar in Amharic Place-Names **Authors:** Greta D. Little · **Year:** 1978 · **Venue:** [Names 26](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/names/) ([Names 1978](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/names/1978/)) · **Publisher:** [University Library System, University of Pittsburgh](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/university-library-system-university-of-pittsburgh/) · **Licence:** [CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Names)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.1179/nam.1978.26.1.3) · [PDF](https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/article/download/865/864) · [DOI 10.1179/nam.1978.26.1.3](https://doi.org/10.1179/nam.1978.26.1.3) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2017290938) **Citations:** 1 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) ## Summary Research on the grammar of proper names usually looks at how a name behaves as a whole unit in a sentence: no plural, no article, and so on. Little looks instead at the grammar *inside* names that have more than one part. Her data are just over 50 two-part Ethiopian place-names, mostly Amharic. They were collected from government documents and maps, European travel and missionary accounts, and a Peace Corps booklet. She sorts them by structure: generic noun before or after the specific one, generic present or left out, and adjective, verb or preposition combined with a noun. Three findings stand out. Generic-before-specific names look older, because they keep archaic words and an unproductive construct-state suffix. Names have almost no bound morphology. Above all, the modern genitive/relative prefix *yä-* never appears inside them, so its presence could mark a phrase as a common noun rather than a name. English shows a similar split between "the University of Texas" and "Texas University." Little argues that place-names keep traces of older syntax and calls for cross-linguistic comparison of how place-names are built. ## Key points - The sample has over 50 two-constituent names, mostly referring to towns, districts and mountains, with a few lakes and rivers. Most are noun-noun, and fewer than half contain the generic noun. - The construct-state suffix *-ä* (historically an accusative ending, no longer productive) is common in generic-first names. *däbrä* ("mountain") now survives only inside names, while *tärara* serves as the everyday noun. - Names lack the plural *-očč*, the definite *-u*, and the genitive/relative *yä-*. A waterfall near t'is ïsat is described with *yä-*, which marks that phrase as a common noun. - The same area is called *durä Jala* on one side of the mountain and *Jala durä* on the other. The second form reorders the words to the modern pattern but keeps the old marker, which betrays syntactic change. - Several names contain Teferi, reflecting Haile Selassie's popularity. Some places have both an Amharic and an older Cushitic name, such as Debre Zeyt and Bishoftu. ## Interesting ideas - The absence of a productive genitive or definite marker inside a multiword expression is a cue that it is a name, not a descriptive phrase. - Some words survive only inside fixed names, as *däbrä* does, so their appearance signals a frozen proper name. - Many names leave out their true head (town, mountain), so the kind of entity must come from context rather than from the name's own words. - A word order that clashes with the morphology it carries is evidence that the form was reanalysed after a grammar change. - One place can have several names, from different languages or with different word orders, depending on who is speaking. ## For Mova How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests: - **I1** (tokens): The tagger could use "of"/article patterns to separate PROPN sequences like "Texas University" from the common-noun phrase "the university of Texas." - **I2** (tokens): The lexicon could flag such name-only forms so that lemmatization does not treat them as ordinary content words. - **I3** (world): When creating entities from place-names, the world builder should infer a suppressed type such as town or river instead of reading it off the last noun. - **I4** (tree): When gparse sees names whose internal order conflicts with their markers, it could treat them as flat units instead of forcing a compound-head analysis. - **I5** (world): The knowledge graph should store alias sets, such as Debre Zeyt/Bishoftu, so that coreference links variant names to a single entity. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* 📚 Shelves (2): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 17,450 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 17,296 works 🧭 Topics (1): [Semitic languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semitic-languages/) · 3,066 works ## Cite Cite as: Greta D. Little. 1978. Internal Grammar in Amharic Place-Names. Names 26. The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{little1978internal, title = {{Internal Grammar in Amharic Place-Names}}, author = {Greta D. Little}, booktitle = {Names 26}, year = {1978}, doi = {10.1179/nam.1978.26.1.3}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1179/nam.1978.26.1.3} } ``` - [← previous Indirect Responses to Loaded Questions](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kaplan-1978-indirect-responses-loaded-questions/) - [↑ back to papers of 1978](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1978/) *Updated 29 October 2026*