Genitive constructions across Somali dialects: Northern, Benadiri, and Maay

Abstract

This study examines genitive constructions across Northern Somali (Maxaa Tiri), Benadiri, and Maay, addressing the limited comparative evidence on dialectal variation in Somali nominal possession. A comparative descriptive design was employed using elicited examples, translation tasks, sentence-judgement prompts, oral narratives, written texts, and prior grammatical descriptions. The 21 speakers constituted the participant sample; the 45 selected core examples (15 per dialect) constituted the analytical sample. The selected examples were coded for marker type, morphosyntactic attachment, constituent order, overt nominal concord, semantic relation, and possible contact influence. Northern Somali primarily employs noun-bound definiteness and nominal concord morphology within a construct-state-like possessed, possessor configuration rather than dedicated genitive case marking. Benadiri exhibits reduced, provisionally clitic-like attachment and discourse-conditioned variation in constituent order. Maay relies more extensively on relational markers and analytic constructions and permits possessor-before-possessed order in part of the dataset. Although all three varieties share a Cushitic tendency toward head-dependent organization, they encode possession through distinct combinations of attachment, relational marking, nominal concord, and word order. Contact-based explanations remain hypotheses requiring stronger historical and sociolinguistic evidence. These findings advance Cushitic typology and support dialect-responsive teaching, multilingual pedagogy, literacy development, and the preservation of Somali linguistic heritage.