Hamar

Abstract This chapter presents an overview of the main grammatical features of Hamar, a South Omotic language spoken in South West Ethiopia and referred to in the literature as the Hamer-Banna cluster. The Hamar (morpho)phonological features discussed in the chapter include the prosodic system, which shows features of both tone and stress, vowel harmony, which produces mid-low vowels in nouns, sibilant harmony and metathesis. Aspects of nominal and verbal morphology are also outlined, with a special focus on the Hamar classification system in which nouns do not have inherent gender, but can be assigned to masculine and feminine depending on semantic, syntactic and pragmatic contexts. The chapter ends with a description of the syntax of the noun phrase and the basic structure of declarative, interrogative and negative clauses.