TheEast Cushitic languages are a branch ofCushitic within theAfroasiatic phylum.^[1][2] Prominent East Cushitic languages includeOromo,Somali, andSidama. The unity of East Cushitic has been contested:^[3]Robert Hetzron suggested combining theHighland East Cushitic languages with theAgaw languages into a "Highland Cushitic" branch,^[4] while most other scholars followMartino Mario Moreno [it] in seeing Highland andLowland as two branches of East Cushitic.^[5]

Clearly distinct subgroups within East Cushitic areHighland East Cushitic (including Sidama andHadiyya),Oromoid (including Oromo andKonso),Omo-Tana (including Somali andArbore),Dullay, andSaho-Afar. A number oftree models of how these relate to each other have been put forward. Highland East Cushitic is commonly seen as a primary branch, also in the "traditional" or "classical" view which groupsYaaku with Dullay and groups the rest asLowland East Cushitic.^[3][6] With the addition ofDahalo, formerly considered to belong toSouth Cushitic, this classification is also followed byDavid Appleyard:^[1]

An influential alternative classification was put forward byMauro Tosco. His 2000 proposal groups Yaaku and Dullay with part of Lowland and replaces them with all of South Cushitic as the fourth daughter branch of East Cushitic:^[6]

Tosco's revised 2020 classification leaves the disputed Dahalo and South Cushitic languages out of consideration, leaving a binary split between Highland and Lowland (although he states that this is negatively defined and could also be seen as separate branches of East Cushitic):^[2]

Finally,Lionel Bender's posthumous 2019 classification also places Dahalo outside East Cushitic,^[7] making it a primary branch of Cushitic as also suggested by Kießling and Mous.^[8]Yaaku is not listed, being placed within Arboroid. Afar–Saho is removed fromLowland East Cushitic; since they are the most 'lowland' of the Cushitic languages, Bender calls the remnant 'core' East Cushitic.

Many East Cushitic languages are characterized bymarked nominative alignment.^[9] Nouns distinguish a nominative and accusative case, but the nominative is only used to mark the subject. Hence, the nominative is commonly referred to as the subject case in Cushitic linguistics, while the accusative is called the absolute case. Besides marking the direct object, the absolute case is used in many other contexts, as well as when case distinctions are neutralized.^[9] It is also used as the citation form of the noun, and as the non-verbal predicate (examples fromBorana:^[9]

• nam-a 'a man' (vs. subject casenam-í)
• kunin nam-a 'this is a man'

Most East Cushitic languages have agender distinction. Nouns are inherently masculine or feminine or, in some languages, a third gender interpreted by linguists as either neuter or a typologically rare "plural gender".^[3] Another cross-linguistically rare feature of East Cushitic gender is that the singular and plural of the same lexeme often differ in gender, as in Somali, where most masculine singulars have a feminine plural, and vice versa.^[3]

As in most other branches of Cushitic, the majority of East Cushitic verbs mark their subject agreement andtense–aspect–mood information with suffixes. A typically East Cushitic feature is the threefold distinction between imperfective, perfective, and jussive forms, marked by a changing vowel.^[10] This is most clearly seen in Lowland languages like Oromo, but also recognizable in Highland languages like Sidamo:^[10]

Most East Cushitic languages obligatorily markfocus.^[9] Sasse cites the following examples fromGidole:

• he-tóóyé 'he looked'
• ínno he-tóóyé 'helooked at us'
• inno tóóyé 'he lookedat us'

The East Cushitic languages share a sizeable amount of basic vocabulary inherited fromProto-East-Cushitic, such as the following:^[11]

• Cushitic languages

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