---
title: "The verb ‘to have’ in Amharic — paper by Łykowska (2000)"
description: "Łykowska tackles a gap she ran into while building sentence schemata for Amharic. Cited by 1 paper here."
authors: ["Laura Łykowska"]
year: 2000
venue: "Studies in African Languages and Cultures"
source: "https://salc.uw.edu.pl/index.php/SALC/article/view/586"
licence: "CC BY-NC-SA (journal licence per DOAJ; Studies in African Languages and Cultures)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lykowska-2000-verb-have-amharic/"
---
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# The verb ‘to have’ in Amharic

**Authors:** [Laura Łykowska](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/laura-lykowska/) · **Year:** 2000 · **Venue:** [Studies in African Languages and Cultures](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/studies-of-the-department-of-african-languages-and-cultures-studies-in-african/) ([Studies in African Languages and Cultures 2000](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/studies-of-the-department-of-african-languages-and-cultures-studies-in-african/2000/)) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA (journal licence per DOAJ; Studies in African Languages and Cultures)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://salc.uw.edu.pl/index.php/SALC/article/view/586) · [PDF](https://salc.uw.edu.pl/index.php/SALC/article/download/586/310) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W6997070568)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) · [1](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lykowska-2000-verb-have-amharic/cited-by/) in our library, of the 149,439 papers whose bibliographies we read

## Summary
Łykowska tackles a gap she ran into while building sentence schemata for Amharic. Those schemata are centred on verbs and needed a verb meaning 'to have', yet grammars describe Amharic as having only a possessive construction built on allé 'is'. In that construction the verb agrees with the possessed item and a suffixed pronoun points back to the possessor. Working with two informants rather than a corpus, she examines this structure across morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. She follows Baye Yimam's analysis, in which the possessor is topicalized out of a le- 'for' phrase.

Her central claim is that contemporary Amharic is reanalysing the construction as a genuine verb allew 'has' with an unusual conjugation, where the suffix works as a person marker. The paper also covers past and future forms, benefactive and malefactive marking, and alternative ways of expressing possession. Using a Polish dictionary's sense inventory as a grid, she catalogues the meanings of 'have', supported by many proverbs. The work matters for dictionaries and learners, which handle the topic poorly, and it documents a change still in progress, partly driven by English.

## Key points
- Present-tense possession uses allé 'is' plus a suffixed pronoun, as in inê bët alleny 'I have a house'.
  - Where agreement varies (e.g. Aster has a sister), verb concord with the possessed noun is optional.
  - The two variants differ only in emphasis.
- Pluralizing the possessed noun is acceptable for alienable things like houses or suitcases. It is rejected for body parts, as in 'a table/cat has four legs'.
  - Bilingual speakers who use English heavily accept the plural everywhere.
- Past tense uses nebber 'was'. The future switches to other verbs: nore 'lived, stayed' or agenynye 'got, found'.
- The infixes -bb- (disadvantage) and -ll- (advantage) colour possession.
  - Illnesses, duties and debts take the disadvantage form almost by default.
  - Festive occasions such as a child's wedding take the advantage form.
- Meanings are mapped against the nine senses of 'have' in the PWN Polish dictionary (Szymczak, 1992). The analysis is illustrated with 52 numbered proverbs.

## Interesting ideas
- One underlying structure, a topicalized le- 'for' phrase, can surface in two ways, and the "object" suffix can be reread as a subject-agreement morpheme of a new verb. Which reading applies depends on the analysis, not only the string.
- Borrowing a fine-grained sense inventory from a well-described language works as a probe grid when the target language's dictionaries are thin.
- The alienable vs. inalienable distinction shows up formally, e.g. in whether the possessed noun can be plural.
- Possession can carry a grammatical marker of benefit or harm to the possessor, with some possessions (debts, illness) defaulting to harm.
- The future of 'have' is often expressed through acquisition verbs like get or buy.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (world): Map "X has Y", "Y is X's" and "there is Y for X" onto the same holding relation, so paraphrases built on 'be' and 'have' yield one world fact.
- **I2** (frames): Split English 'have' into explicit senses (ownership, composition/parts, measure, ailment, obligation) and route each to a different frame instead of treating all uses as possession.
- **I3** (world): Store "a table has legs" as a part-whole fact in the ontology rather than as a transferable holding, so it is never counted in give/take arithmetic.
- **I4** (frames): Attach an affect polarity to holding states (debts and illness negative, a wedding to host positive) to support implicature and emotion questions about characters.
- **I5** (answer): Let readers infer a future holding from "will buy/get a cow" so word problems and story QA can answer "what will she have?"

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

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## Cite

Cite as: Laura Łykowska. 2000. The verb ‘to have’ in Amharic. Studies in African Languages and Cultures.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@article{lykowska2000verb,
  title = {{The verb ‘to have’ in Amharic}},
  author = {Laura Łykowska},
  journal = {Studies in African Languages and Cultures},
  year = {2000},
  url = {https://salc.uw.edu.pl/index.php/SALC/article/view/586}
}
```

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