"AGREEMENT IN SOMALI CLAUSES WITH WAXAA FOCUS AND VS WORD ORDER"

Abstract

In clauses, Somali verb conjugate based on the person (first, second, or third), number (singular or plural), and gender of the subject (masculine or feminine) for the third person singular. This essay investigates and systematically describes how subject-verb agreement functions in Somali clauses when the focus particle waxaa is present and the verb-subject (VS) word order is used. After an introduction to Somali sentence structure and its agreement patterns and comprehensive theoretical background it then focuses specifically on Somali agreement patterns. To address the research questions, two approaches was adopted. First, a large corpus investigation was conducted to collect necessary data. Following this, a survey was created and distributed to ten native Somali speakers. The data analysis involved examining previous research on Somali clauses with the focus particle and comparing the findings with existing data provided by Saeed (1984). This comprehensive framework and the collected data were then used to illustrate how agreement functions in Somali clauses with waxaa and VS word order. The results reveal different construction of agreements in the Somali clauses when it contains waxaa. Specifically, some sentences exhibit identical verb forms but have subject nouns differing in grammatical gender. On the other hand, other sentences contain the same nouns in terms of both gender and number, yet they display different verb forms.