A STUDY OF SHORT POSSESSIVE SUFFIXES IN SOMALI: PATTERNS AND USAGE
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Abstract
Possessive suffixes in Somali have two forms: one short form and one long form. This study aims to investigate and analyze the patterns and usage of short possessive suffixes. The research uses a method approach involving the investigation of specific nouns through corpus searches to analyze short possessive suffixes in Somali. To identify the noun categories that can be suffixed with short possessive suffixes, the thesis examines 40 nouns divided into 6 sets. In addition, a typological and cross-linguistic overview is presented to create a theoretical basis and an overall picture of some other languages that exhibit similar linguistic patterns. The findings and discussions provide insights into the distribution and usage of possessive suffixes with different types of nouns, including family members, body parts, friends, and quantificational nouns. The study supports previous research, questions it at some points, and contributes new findings. Also, it opens new ways for future research to explore different patterns of possession construction in the language. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that the Somali language has a possessive classification based on alienability split.