Investigating Valency Decreasing Verb Operational Devices: A Case Study of the Oromo Language

The purpose was to examine and analyze the mechanisms used in the Oromo language to decrease the valency (or argument structure) of verbs. Specifically, it aimed to understand how valency-decreasing operational devices are employed, their semantic motivations, and their implications for linguistic theory. To assess the valency-decreasing devices, the first corpus analysis was used to collect a representative corpus of Oromo texts containing valency-decreasing verbs. Next, linguistic annotation was used to involve tagging verbs, identifying their valency properties (such as transitivity), and noting any derivational devices used to decrease valency. Then, interviews with native speakers were carried out to provide valuable insights. Finally, an in-depth qualitative analysis of selected examples was conducted to only explore the semantic motivations behind specific operational devices regardless of considering cultural and pragmatic factors. The valency-decreasing operations in Oromo are the passives with -am- suffix, the anticausatives with -at- suffix, the inchoatives with -a(a)t-, -a(a)h- and -o(o)m- suffixes and the impersonal inflections of syntactic constructions. The findings revealed how these devices function in Oromo verbal operations. This study seeks to contribute to (i) providing a comprehensive analysis of valency-decreasing mechanisms in the Oromo language; (ii) identifying universal patterns or language-specific variations in valency decrease strategies; (iii) informing linguistic theories by examining how operational devices impact verb valency; (iv) offering insights for language documentation, language teaching, and natural language processing (NLP) systems. Key Terms: Oromo, Valency, Valency-decreasing devices, Basic verbs, Derived verbs.