Presentative demonstratives in Kambaata from a Cushitic perspective

This article is the first study of presentative demonstratives in a Cushitic language. It closes a gap in the grammatical documentation of Kambaata (Highland East Cushitic) and analyzes in detail the morphology and the functions of presentative demonstratives (‘here s/he is!’). In the Cushitic context, the Kambaata presentative system stands out as unique in its morphological complexity: Kambaata presentative demonstratives are marked for three deictic dimensions, and in each deictic dimension two genders and two numbers are distinguished, which amounts to 12 functionally distinct forms, plus 12 free or dialectal variants. The presentatives cannot be morphologically derived from other (adjectival, pronominal) demonstrative types. Kambaata is not the only Cushitic language with presentatives but traces of this demonstrative type are difficult to come by. The article is able to present the first evidence for the existence of presentative demonstratives in Hadiyya, Gedeo, Sidaama and Oromo.