Due percorsi etiosemitici per l’evoluzione da pronome suffisso a marca di accordo

The historical grammar of Ethio-Semitic languages exhibits two distinct morphosyntactic paths that led to the refunctionalization of pronominal suffixes as agreement markers. The first path focuses on the use of pronominal suffixes in “pronoun-plus-noun” constructions (such as the Classical Ethiopic example qatal-o la nəguś, ‘he killed him, to the king’) and originated the object-verb and noungenitive agreement patterns found in some modern Ethio-Semitic languages. The second path, which led to the creation of the inflecting converb in Ethio-Semitic languages and the peculiar morphosyntax of the adverbial adjective in Gə'əz, involves the reanalysis or opacification of the accusative marker in constructions where a verbal or abstract noun in the accusative case functions adverbially and is combined with a pronominal suffix with genitive function.