Presentative deictics in Oromo

Abstract This study deals with the forms, meanings and functions of presentative deictics in Oromo. Basically, presentatives deictics are deictic expressions that are used in directing the attention of an addressee towards a referent mentioned by a speaker in the communication situation. They are expressed in the use of proximal and distal presentative deictic adverbs, adverbial phrases or determiners. This is a qualitative descriptive study and the data were collected through note-taking of free language use, elicitation, and introspection. The data thus collected were transcribed phonemically using IPA. The data were arranged in interlinear morpheme-by-morpheme basis in three lines following the Leipzig Glossing Rules. The results of the analyses contained lexicalizations of presentative expressions commonly used, (morpho)-syntactc properties of presentatives in different discourse contexts, the exophoric and referential functions of presentatives of which the exophoric function takes into account referents found in the environment where communication is taking place, and the referential functions were concerned with reference to linguistic items in the text. The offerative and the directive functions come under the exophoric use, whereas cataphoric, anaphoric and discourse signal functions come under referential functions. The meanings of the presentative deictics are based on the context in which they are used.