Azeb Amha


Azeb Amha is a linguist working on the morphology and syntax of Afroasiatic languages, with a special focus on Omotic languages. A senior researcher at the African Studies Center Leiden, Amha is co-editor of the international Journal of African Languages and Linguistics and member of the board of the Dutch Society for African Studies.
After undergraduate studies at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, Amha obtained her PhD degree from Leiden University. Her thesis, a comprehensive grammar of the Maale language of South-West Ethiopia, was hailed as "an example of descriptive linguistics at its best". Her broad-ranging work since then has involved research on and audio-visual documentation of the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Oyda, Zargulla and Wolaitta peoples, whose languages belong to the Omotic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family.
In 2007, her research on language endangerment and audiovisual documentation was one of 7 finalists for the Academische Jaarprijs and in 2016, she was awarded a competitive research grant for a three year project of the Endangered Languages Documentation Project for the linguistic and ethnographic documentation of endangered cultural practices of the Zargulla people in South-West Ethiopia.

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