When we pursue the analysis further, we see that the second syllable in <qabso> is deleted
entirely and replaced by <-an>. This suggests that the future tense is a discontinuous
morpheme. We therefore posit that the first element has four allomorphs, <-i>, <-in>, <-n>
and <-an>. It is unclear at this point what the underlying morpheme is. We are not necessarily
interested in finding out in this paper. Suffice it to posit that the morpheme structure formula
that helps conjugate Somali verbs in the future tense is the following:
Future Tense Verb + {-i, -in, -a, -n, -an} … doonaa
Finally, we note that the auxiliary <doonaa> agrees in gender with the third person singular
female subject and changes into <doontaa>.
9.0 Summary
There are important similarities between English and Somali that ESL teachers can use as
a launching pad to teach English conjugation to Somali students. First, the broad grammatical
category of tense exists in both languages. Semantically, they express similar ideas.
Morphologically, Somali and English have similar conjugations in the past tense and the future
tense. For the past tense, both languages use an inflectional suffix. English uses <-ed> for
regular verbs, while Somali used <-ay>. For the future tense, both resort to auxiliary verbs.
English relies on <will> to encode future events, while Somali uses <doon> to do the same.
There are also many differences, which are due to the richness of Somali morphophonological
rules. Since English has a fairly straightforward conjugation system, Somali learners of English
would find it relatively easy to learn to conjugate verbs in the present, the past, and the future.
The future is the easiest of the three because <will> is invariable and goes with every verb in
English.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ettien Koffi, Ph.D. in linguistics from Indiana University, teaches linguistics at Saint Cloud
State University, MN. Author of many peer-reviewed articles on various topics in linguistics and
of four books: Language Society in Biblical Times (1996), Paradigm Shift in Language Planning
and Policy: Game Theoretic Solutions (2012), Applied English Syntax (2010, 2015), and the New
Testament in Anyi Morofu (2017), a task which took over 25 years. Specializing in acoustic
phonetics, dialect variation, and emergent orthographies, his current research centers on speech
acoustics of L2 English (within the Speech Intelligibility Framework), Central Minnesota
Shukria Omar graduated from St. Cloud State University with an MA in TESL. She is
originally from Baladweyne in Somalia. She grew up in Yemen and came to the USA in 2001.
Hassan Yussuf is currently enrolled in the MA TESL program at St. Cloud State University. He
grew up in Kenya. He is also a Somali-English and English-Somali interpreter in Central
Linguistic Portfolios, Vol. 6 [2017], Art. 4