Syntactic Structure of Wolaytta Sentences Involving Reported Speech

Abstract

Wolaytta (Afroasiatic family, Omotic branch) is spoken in the southwestern part of Ethiopia. In addition to genuine direct quotation, it allows direct–indirect mixed quotation in which a finite verb at the end of the quotation (and the nominative noun phrase that agrees with it, if any) is reported from the viewpoint of the speaker of the original utterance and the rest of the quotation from the viewpoint of the reporter. Judging from the distribution of normal and reflexive third-person pronouns, a quotation in Wolaytta does not constitute a clause by itself.