The semantics and pragmatics of blessing expressions in Rayya Tigrinya

Abstract Blessings, both ritualized and religious, are universal phenomena despite varying from one society to another in terms of linguistic expressions and manner of practice. They are “performative utterances” intricately woven into the very fabric of human existence. This paper set out to uncover the semantics and pragmatics of blessing expressions in Rayya Tigrinya, a variety of Tigrinya, spoken in the Southern Tigray Zone in Ethiopia. Accordingly, blessing expressions’ literal and contextual meanings performed by elders and parents were presented and analyzed. The study adopted a descriptive design within a qualitative research approach. To obtain authentic data, a total of 9 native Rayya Tigrinya speakers, 4 males and 5 females, aged 45–85 years, were purposefully selected. The data were collected via semi-structured interviews and validated through the introspective method. The gathered data were thematically classified and analyzed through linguistic descriptive methods. The results confirmed that blessings are predominantly used metaphorically or connotatively, devoid of their literal meanings. Peace, health, unity, wealth, long life, success, successor, caretaker, and inclusion, all of which are basic for humans’ existence, are the most general and recurrent themes expressed in the elders’ and parents’ blessings. Blessing expressions, which are believed to be materialized in the future, are used for face-saving acts. In most instances, blessings are made implicitly appealing to the supernatural whose divine power is believed to execute the good wishes/benedictions, which also makes them religious. In other words, blessings are applied for mediation between the human world and the divine realm.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tesfaye Ashenafi Shiferaw is an English lecturer at Debre Berhan University, and he is currently pursuing his PhD in linguistics, particularly applied linguistics, at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.He has obtained a B.Ed. degree in English from Jimma University and an MA degree in General Linguistics from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.He has been teaching courses: Introduction to Language and Linguistics, micro-linguistics (English phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics), macro-linguistics (socio-linguistics), and Writing and Communicative English skills for undergraduate students at Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia.Besides, he has been advising and supervising regular and summer in-service undergraduate students for eight years.His recent scholarly contribution is, Tesfaye Ashenafi (2023), Cursing expressions in Rayya Tigrinya: Semantic and Pragmatic Aspects.His major scholarly areas of interest include syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and socio-linguistics.He can be reached at tashenafi755@gmail.com
It is a universal and socio-linguistic fact that speakers of any living language can constantly show variations in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar among themselves, mainly due to geographical and social variations.Hence, Rayya Tigrinya is distinct in phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax from the standard Tigrinya (Dagnew, 2019;Niguss, 2021) despite a few studies done on the Tigrinya's dialects.
Blessings are part and parcel of any given society.Societies use them as powerful tools for positively affecting their community on different occasions.Similarly, the Rayya people use blessings in their daily conversations and interactions to reflect their various social, cultural, philosophical, psychological, and religious welfares.Besides, there is a long-held belief in the speech community that parents', elders', and religious leaders' blessings are believed to be more efficacious than those of the juniors.In other words, blessings are power-oriented like curses.
The advent of technological innovations and seeking modern life has significantly influenced the existential traditional norms of the societies across Ethiopia in general and in Rayya people in particular.Blessing expressions, as one of the aspects of language use, are also in constant change.These "performative speech acts" (Austin, 1962, p. 69) have not been well studied and properly documented so far although they are powerful tools for the maintenance of values.Blessing speech acts like cursing ones are considered as "sensitive."They are one of the most marginalized studied areas in Tigrinya in general and in Rayya Tigrinya in particular as far as the researcher's best knowledge is concerned.For this fact, he has been intrigued to conduct a study on the issue.Hence, this study aimed to examine blessing expressions' literal and contextual meanings in Rayya Tigrinya so that the findings will fill the identified knowledge gap and will also contribute to the development of the language.Besides, documentation of the vocabulary of the blessing speech acts will become a resource for lexicographers (dictionary makers) and will also shed light for other researchers to carry out related studies on other Ethiopian languages.
After the introduction, the paper is organized as follows: in 2, the author presents the literature review.In 3, he discusses the theoretical framework; in 4, he pinpoints the research methodology.In 5, he deals with the results and finally, in 6, he provides the discussion and conclusion of the whole results.

Literature review
The term blessing is defined as "the invoking of God's favor upon a person" (Sharifi & Amir, 2012, p. 55).The word's root is "brk" which is Hebrew and consists of three distinctive meanings, one of which is "to bless" (Mitchell, 1987), and whose meaning is "to give the power of deity to the addressee", "to command the addressee to a deity for blessing", "to bestow a power and strength to the person being blessed" (Botterweck & Ringgren, 1975, p. 281).It is plausible or possible to deduce from the definitions that while making blessings, one can implicitly or explicitly appeal either to God or any deity for the good wishes/benedictions to be effective.In other words, the authority is given to an external causer for the good wishes to be executed.Brill (1999) said that "blessing is the transference of good, pleasure, power of increase in material possession, psychological security, and mental development" (p.9).Scharbert (1975) also elaborated that "blessing makes a declaration concerning the relationship between the blesser and the person to be blessed and he also said that the utterance of the blessing formula is a fortunate declaration of the solidarity that exists between the speaker and the person for whom the formula is envisioned" (p.284).Besides, a blessing is defined as "the ritual performance that transfers protective power, as well as the object or word that bears that power once transferred, as well as the protective power with which a subject is endowed such as act" (Frankfurter, 2006, p. 158).In other words, there are actors involved and contexts in which blessings are made.Vanderveken (1990) further defined and clarified blessing as a "ritualized and religious activity, where the speaker who has a higher social status declares benediction upon another person wishing a future life with protection from harm, happiness, and prosperity" (p.203).Similarly, a blessing is power-oriented, and "only certain individuals may principally utter out the blessings" (Westermann, 1978, p. 21).Besides, a blessing is a speech act related to some future action and it functions as a "performative" (Austin, 1962), which when "uttered alters some state of affairs in the world" (Eba & Ashenafi, 2017, p. 45165).
To put it in a nutshell, the sole purpose of the blessing is to include the blessed in the mainstream currents of society.Blessing, as a tool of social control, is also believed to have an associated divine power that can empower and encourage one who is in the line of society.As a tradition, individuals highly need to have their parents', elders', and religious leaders' blessings to live a secure and prosperous life.

Theoretical framework
Speech act has been used as a theoretical framework to analyze blessing expressions in this paper.It was Austin (1962) who was the speech act's pioneer and further developed by Searle (1969) and the speech act is now applied as one of the theories of linguistics which also deals with "the role of utterances about the behavior of the speaker and hearer in interpersonal communication" (Crystal, 2003, p. 427).
There are three kinds of acts performed by the words we utter which Austin (1962) dubbed "locutionary acts" which is the actual form of the words, "illocutionary acts", the speaker's intention by uttering the words, and "perlocutionary acts", the words' effect on the hearer/interlocutor (p.99).In other words, the words we utter have actions, intentions, and effects on the recipients.
However, an illocutionary act is the focus of a lot of speech act theorists since it has illocutionary force.Accordingly, Austin (1962) pointed out five different types of speech acts based on the illocutionary force, namely "verdictives", "exercitves", "commissives", "behabitives", and "expositives" in which the speech act of blessing is classified in a sub-class of "performatives" which is called, "behabitives" (p.151).Austin (1962) also defined the term "behabitives" as "the notion of reaction to other people's behavior and fortunes and attitudes and expressions to someone else's past conduct or imminence conduct" (p.159).Besides, it is explained that "performative utterances do not describe or report or constate anything at all; they are neither true nor false, and the uttering of behabitive utterance is doing of an action" (Austin, 1962, p. 5) On the other hand, Searle (1979) differing from Austin's categories, classified speech acts into five groups by coining "declarative", "commisive", "assertive", "expressive", and "directive", where he also grouped the speech act of blessing under the category of "expressive" which he defined "an utterance endeavoring to express a psychological attitude towards the addressee" (p.10).According to Bach and Harnish (1979), a blessing is also categorized in a sub-class of "acknowledgments." In light of the above theoretical framework, the blessings' locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts were presented, described, and analyzed.

Research methodology
This study's sole objective was to examine the semantics and pragmatics of blessing expressions in Rayya Tigrinya, a variety of Tigrinya spoken in the Southern Tigray Zone in Ethiopia.The study adopted a descriptive design within a qualitative research method.This method was employed because it was found to be feasible to describe and analyze the blessing expressions in which they are used.This study's firsthand source was native Rayya Tigrinya speakers inhabiting the Southern Tigray Zone in Ethiopia.Other Ethiopian languages like Amharic (Semitic), Afan Oromo (Cushitic), Afar (Cushitic), and χamt'aɲa (Cushitic) are spoken to various degrees together with Tigrinya in the study area.Rayya people are bilingual (Niguss, 2021) due to the language contact phenomenon for which reason the researcher employed purposive sampling to select both a representative area and key informants to obtain reliable and credible information.Hence, Hugumbrida, a small district, was purposefully selected assuming the dwellers had less language contact with other ethnic groups.From which, four males and five females altogether nine key informants, aged 45-85 years old, were purposefully selected.
The researcher mainly employed semi-structured interviews to obtain the pertinent data.Data verification and validation were also made through the inspective method as the researcher speaks Rayya Tigrinya variety.Based on the prepared open-ended questions, the researcher first requested the informants to tell him the blessing expressions they would frequently make to bless their families, relatives, homesteads, neighbors, country. ..etc.Next, the informants were asked the contextual meanings or the illocutionary force the expressions entailed and their responses were audio recorded.The informants were also asked to whom they appealed and why they did so while making blessings (see the Appendix).While conducting the interview, the researcher was also taking notes from the informants' utterances.
The researcher followed three procedures to interpret and analyze the data.The recorded data were first transcribed phonemically with IPA and they were italicized and presented in the first line/tier.Besides, the phonetic transcription in square brackets or [] was done to emphasize the informants' actual utterances.The transcribed blessing expressions were then glossed morphemeby-morpheme with the Leipzig glossing rule and were done in the second line.Next, free and/or literal English translations were given in the third line.Finally, the transcribed, glossed, and translated data were analyzed thematically and qualitatively.

Results
Blessings inherently require actors (the blesser and the blessed), and the specific contexts in which they are uttered.In other words, blessing expressions can be identified based on who speaks to whom, and the situations or contexts in which they are uttered.
The elders' and parents' blessing expressions were presented, described, and analyzed in the two sections below.Elders' blessings were presented and analyzed in the first section followed by the parents' ones in the second one.

Elders' blessings
Rayya's elders (both male and female) give blessings wishing for good things to happen to their families, neighbors, homesteads, and the country at large.They wish for peace or security to prevail, for people to have health, long life, love, unity, prosperity, fertility, and other good things.The elders who make blessings are also highly respected by the community.As a tradition, elders' blessings are believed to be more efficacious than those of the juniors in Rayya culture which is also prevalent in other Ethiopian cultures.Duszak and Okulska (2011) also explained that "being old in all cultures and at all times involves a consideration that has to reconcile a contradiction, and it combines with increased agency, responsibility, causality, and social power" (p. 7).The blessing expression in (1) is, therefore, performed seeking everyone's security/safety in Rayya culture.
(1) a. χɨffuʔ jɨ-ʃgog-ə-ll-ɨ-nna bad 3 MS-chase away.IPFV-3 MS-BEN-EP-1PLO "May He protect (lit.chase away) us from bad things!" Interacting face-to-face with the blessed, the elder makes the blessing act χɨffuʔ jɨʃgogəllɨnna "May He chase away bad things from us" in (1a) wishing for bad things not to happen to his/her families, neighbors, homesteads, community, and country in the future which is full of uncertainties.To show their agreement with the elder's blessing act, the blessed/partakers react by uttering "Amen!" which literally denotes Let it be so.The word is also pervasive in other Ethiopian languages.It is the positive and optimistic face-to-face feedback to the speaker's intention that also confirms his/her authority to make such a blessing.The blessing's perlocutionay act in (1a) implies that the blessed feel safe and secure in his/her future.
The adjective χɨffuʔ "bad" in the expression contextually refers to natural and man-made problems like disease, famine, poverty, migration, war/insecurity, and death, all of which cause or make one's life challenging and devastating.The morpheme {jɨ-} in jɨʃgogəllɨnna is third person masculine singular implicitly refers to the pronoun "He" who is "God" whose divine power the blesser calls upon for the good wishes to be effective, which also makes the expression religious.The optative clause jɨʃgogəllɨnna "May He chase away us" which figuratively means "May He protect us" implies that man is so weak, helpless, powerless, and dependent that he needs the supernatural's guidance and support.Besides, the informants said that the power of human is so limited that he/she does not know what sort of problems he/she will face in his/her future life.They also claimed that "God is so omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent that the divine and protective power is attributed to Him while we are making blessings." The blesser is also part of the blessed ones as he/she uses the first person plural object marker {-nna} "us" in (1a) for the benediction.In other words, the morpheme {-ll-} in the transcription attests that the beneficiaries are the blesser and the blessed ones.The expression is also made to the plural audience in a general context.
One of the Rayya people's core values is unity, living together with family, neighbors, and community with harmony and peace avoiding exclusion.The elders, therefore, make the expressions in (2) while practicing their day-to-day blessings.The blessing act kab kərənna ʔajjɨfləjənna "May He never separate us from our hill" in (2a) is a wish for everyone's peaceful co-existence, which is one of the elders' daily blessings.The noun or nominal kərən "hill" in the expression figuratively refers to the "homeland" in which one was born and grew up.The word also contextually denotes one's country.The expression's illocutionary force infers that one might be forced to leave his/her homeland where he/she was born, grew up, educated, and lived because of natural and man-made problems.A refugee might also face several problems such as social, economic, political, and psychological while living in a new place.One of the informants also claimed that it is a blessing and grace to live in one's homeland and to be buried in it peacefully.Hence, the elders' wish for everyone's harmonious co-existence in his/her homeland indirectly appeals to the supernatural power whose name is referred to by the pronoun "He" in the expression.
Besides, the expression bɨħadə jɨʔabləʕənna jɨʔastɨjənna "May He help us eat and drink as one people" in (2b) is a locutionary act, but its intended meaning is a wish for unity, living together.In other words, the expression implies that an individual without other people around him/her is weak, helpless, and powerless.The informants also said that people are highly needed whether in happy or sad moments of a person's life.The expression also entails that sharing what you have with others strengthens unity and togetherness which also reveals the Rayya people's collective cultures, and so does in other Ethiopian societies.In both examples, the blesser is also a part of the blessed ones and the expressions are given to the plural audience in general contexts.By interacting face-to-face, the blessings are directly given to the blessed.
In light of the above, the elders wish for everyone's safety, protection, and wisdom, all of which are thought of as basic for humans' existence, with the expressions in (3).The expressions wuk'abə ʔabbotatkum jɨħalwuχum "May your fathers' spirit keep you" and kab mərgəm ʕabəjti jɨsəwrɨχum "May He hide you from elders' curse" in (3a-b) are a wish for everyone's safety and protection.In (3a), the authority is explicitly attributed to the ancestral spirits whose protective power the community strongly believes in.In other words, there is a belief that forefathers' and foremothers' spirits have magical power to protect individuals from bad things.The blessing is, for instance, given when one decides to make a long journey from his/her birthplace for different purposes.
In (3b), the expression is a wish for the blessed to protect from mərgəm ʕabəjti "elders" curses."The clause jɨsəwrɨχum "hide you" metaphorically refers to one's protection from elders' curses which are traditionally believed to be dreadful and effective.Besides, the informants said that "elders" curses are so devastating and efficacious that one who is naughty, disrespectful, and deviant can be affected by them."They also said that one who is cursed by elders will be excluded from different socio-economic activities.As a tradition, one who has good manners is "blessed" but bad ones "cursed."It is strongly believed that the cursed will live a miserable and unsuccessful life.Given the authority to the divine power, the elders, therefore, advise children and youths not to be cursed by their parents, religious leaders, and elderly people while they are making their daily blessings.
Besides, the expression ʔaʔmɨroχum jɨʔabrəhəllɨχum "May He enlighten your mind" in (3c) is a locutionary act in which the verbal clause "enlighten your mind" metaphorically refers "bestow upon you wisdom" through which one can make a successful and happy life.The authority is indirectly attributed to the universal power, which is referred to by the pronoun "He."Besides, the informants claimed that the wisdom bestowed by the supernatural is everlasting and makes one happy and prosperous.In all the examples (3a-c), the blessed/interlocutors respond by uttering "Amen" in agreement with the blesser's underlying meanings.In other words, it is strongly believed that the elders' blessings will be effective sooner or later, and for this reason, the participants react by pronouncing "Amen."Besides, the morpheme {-χum} "you", which is a second-person plural object mark, indicates that the blesser is not a part of the blessed ones.The blessing expressions are also performed by interacting face-to-face with the blessed ones.

Parental blessings
Parental blessings like the elders' ones are also believed to be powerful and efficacious in the Rayya people as well as other Ethiopian societies.Hence, parents (fathers and mothers) wish for their children's growth, long life, health, success, prosperity, etc. while practicing their daily blessings.They wish for bad things not to happen to their children in their future lives, with the expressions in ( 4).The expression jɨʔabas'ħɨχum "May He help you reach" in (4a) is a locutionary act in which the verb "reach" metaphorically refers to "grow."It is one of the common parental blessings given to children.The expression implies that parents are worried about their children's growth since a large number of children are born at home, and some of them die while mothers are in labor.Besides, there are not enough healthcare centers where children are properly examined and nursed while they get sick although we are in the 21st century.The mortality rate of infants is high, especially in rural areas, and for this reason, parents are worried about their children's wellbeing.Hence, the authority is attributed to only the supernatural whose divine power the community strongly believes in to make their children grow.
Besides, parents make the expression ʕɨdməj t'ɨʕɨnnaj jɨhabχum "May He give you long life and health" in (4b) wishing for their children's overall successes, in which the words ʕɨdmə "long life" and t'ɨʕɨnna "health" in the expression are basic and highly needed by everyone and the power is also attributed to the universal power.In other words, the expression implies that if children are bestowed a long life and health, they might figure out their dreams and will be able to live a good life.Children's long life and health can also benefit parents, families, the community, and the country.
The expression məngədχum χ'ɨnuʕ jɨgbəro "May He make your path straight" in (4c) is also a locutionary act in which the nominal məngədi "path" metaphorically refers to one's journey in life which consists of several ups and downs.The adjective χ'ɨnuʕ "straight" also figuratively refers to a journey that does not have a lot of challenges and obstacles.The expression in (4c) is, therefore, made wishing for children's success and good life in the future.The blesser's intention is "Let your life journey become smooth" which is one of the blessings every parent wishes to happen to their children and the authority is also attributed to the supernatural power.
Moreover, parents love to see their children married and make a family, both of which are also traditionally and religiously believed to be a "blessing", by performing the following blessing expressions in (5).
( 5 The blessing expression ħagosχum jɨʔarʔɨjjənna "May He make us see your happiness" in (5a) is a locutionary act.The word ħagos "happiness" in the expression figuratively refers to "marriage/ wedding" which parents wish for their children.The expression implies that parents need to see their children's successors before passing away.As a tradition, parents are also highly respected by the community they live with if their children get married and have family in Ethiopian societies in general and the Rayya people in particular.Besides, marriage is culturally and religiously believed to be a "blessing." The blessing fɨrəχum jɨʔarʔɨjjənna "May He make us see your seed" in (5b) is also a locutionary act.The word fɨrə "seed" in the expression metaphorically refers to a "child" whom parents wish to see from their married children.The expression implied that seeking a continuity of one's heredity which is one of the core values of the Rayya people.Stating differently, children who are their parents' successors are thought of as an "asset/wealth" in Ethiopia's societies in general and the Rayya people in particular.
Besides, parents highly need to see their children's offspring.They want to be called grandfathers and grandmothers while they are alive.Hence, the expression in (5c) is a good wish to have such a bloodline.In all the examples (5a-c), the power is indirectly attributed to the supernatural to execute the good wishes/benedictions.Furthermore, children are blessed to be successful in their future lives.As a father or a mother, a parent does not want to see his/her child become poor, beggarly, and dependent on someone else.It is disgraceful for them as well as their children.The expressions in (6) are, for instance, given for such a purpose.The blessing locutionary acts bɨʔɨdχum jɨʔanbɨrχum "May He help you live by your hand" and naj səb ʔɨd ʔajjɨʔarʔɨjχum 'May He never make you see other people's hand" in (6a-b) are given wishing for children to be diligent, hardworking, and independent in which the prepositional phrase bɨʔɨdχum "by your hand" in (6a) figuratively refers to "one's independence."The expressions imply that one feels shameful,disgraceful, and has poor self-esteemed if he/she depends on others.Besides, people highly disrespect and give less value to a person who has not secured his/her independence.One of the informants also said, "Being dependent on someone else makes you disgraceful."While giving blessings, parents also teach their children how life is challenging and difficult unless they are hardworking, bold, courageous, and independent in their future lives.
Parents are also worried about their future lives when they get older, weaker, and dependent.They highly need to have their children's care and support.The examples in (7), for instance, illustrate their good wishes.3 MS-make.IPFV-2PLO "May He make you our burying when we die!" The expressions t'əwərtɨna jɨgbərχum "May He make you our caretakers" and χ'əbərtɨna jɨgbərχum "May He make you our burying when we die" in (7a-b) are made wishing for children to care for their parents when they get weak and dependent, and to bury them when they die respectively.It is also traditionally believed that a son or daughter who does not care for his/her parents is not good, and he/she is often considered "cursed" in the Rayya community, and so does in other Ethiopian societies.In contrast, a child who cares for his/her old parents is thought of as "blessed."Parents, therefore, make the blessings in (7a-b) appealing to the divine power for their wishes to come true.

Discussion and conclusion
The main objective of this study was to examine the semantics and pragmatics of blessing expressions in Rayya Tigrinya which is spoken in the Southern Tigray Zone in Ethiopia.To this effect, a total of nine key informants ranging from 45-85 years old were purposefully selected and interviewed on the topic of blessings and their contextual and underlying meanings.
The results show that blessing expressions are used devoid of their literal meanings; they are predominantly used metaphorically/figuratively.In most cases, blessing expressions are implicitly performed by calling upon the supernatural power for the good wishes or benedictions to be effective, which also implies that man is so weak, helpless, and powerless that he highly depends on God's help.Syntactically, blessing expressions use a jussive/optative mood.Besides, blessings like curses are power-oriented in the sense that only parents, elders, and other senior people are culturally and religiously believed to be appropriate to give or make blessings in the Rayya culture which is also prevalent in other Ethiopian cultures.These individuals' blessings are also believed to be more powerful, influential, and efficacious than those of the juniors.
The study converges with the works of (Eba & Ashenafi, 2017;Luter & Mathewos, 2019;Taye, 2021) and all of whom discussed the power and efficacy of elders' and parents' blessings on the blessed ones in their respective cultures.The authors also explained that the elders' and parents' blessings are used to maintain and sustain the community's existential norms and traditions.
To conclude, blessings, which are traditionally and religiously believed to be efficacious in the future, are given for face-saving acts.Blessing expressions are locutionary acts, the benedictions are illocutionary acts, and the feelings of power, courage, safety, inclusion, blessing, etc., are perlocutionary acts.Peace, safety, love, health, long life, prosperity, success, happiness, unity, fertility/successor, inclusion, etc., all of which are basic for humans' co-existence, are the most recurrent themes expressed in blessing expressions in the Rayya Tigrinya variety.Throughout the Table 1.Consonant phonemes adopted from (Tesfay, 2002,  blessing expressions, the Rayya people's social, cultural, religious, philosophical, and moral fabrics are explicitly expounded.As a recommendation, blessing expressions should be exhaustively and properly studied from the anthropological, psychological, sociological, and philosophical perspectives so that the findings can contribute to the development of theoretical backgrounds in relation to the language's speech acts. Tigrinya has consonants both basic first-order and labialized velars, and the usual seven-vowel system which is also used by some Ethio-Semitic languages (Leslau, 1966;Tesfay, 2002).
As do most Ethiopian Semitic languages, Tigrinya has a symmetrical seven-vowel inventory as shown in Table 1 and 2, adopted from (Leslau, 1966, p. 595).