DP Positions in African Languages (original) (raw)
Related papers
Current issues in the morphosyntactic typology of Sub-Saharan languages
published in Tom Güldemann (ed.), The languages and linguistics of Africa. Mouton De Gruyter. 712-821., 2018
This paper does not aim at providing a general survey of morphosyntactic phenomena already signaled as particularly frequent or rare among Sub-Saharan languages, or showing a particular genetic or areal distribution in Sub-Saharan Africa. The idea here is rather to select topics on which recently published works shed some new light, or which I consider particularly promising on the basis of my own descriptive work on individual languages, or my participation in collective research projects. The questions discussed in this paper are grouped under the following five headings: – Nouns and noun phrases (section 2) – Argument structure and valency operations (section 3) – Clause structure (section 4) – Complex constructions (section 5) – Information structure (section 6)
Oxford Handbook of African Languages, 2020
The Mande language Dan, which is spoken in the West African countries of Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and Liberia, is among the few African languages that distinguish between five tone registers. Metrical feet in this language play a role with respect to nasal harmo ny as well as tonal and vocalic combinations. This chapter also presents a general overview of simple and complex sentences, with a special focus on locative marking, which constitutes a prominent morphosyntactic feature of Dan nouns, as well as on labili ty, which is a typologically interesting feature of the other major category in the lan guage, the verb.
DP in Igbo and Chinese: A contrastive analysis
This is a study of the DP in Igbo and Chinese. The DP has been used here to refer to all phrasal structures in which a D (determiner) occurs with a nominal. Moreover, there is the goal to resolve the contradiction in a D being a constituent of an NP (noun phrase) or a Pro (pronoun) serving as the head of an NP. Igbo is a member of the Niger Congo languages, while Chinese is one of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Based on this premise, there should be differences between the systems of the languages. The differences, by the tenets of CA (Contrastive Analysis) would constitute areas of difficulty for the speakers of one of the languages learning the other language. Determining these differences is therefore crucial towards contributing to a positive achievement in the teaching and learning of any of the languages as the target language. For the past five years, Chinese has become a target language to some speakers of Igbo at the Confucius Institute, of Nnamdi Azikiwe University (Unizik), Awka. A systematic study of the systems of these languages is necessary. This necessity is satisfied here. The study reveals that while Ds in Igbo are positioned to the right of their noun complements, Ds in Chinese are positioned to the left of their noun complements. In other words, there are differences between
2013
Adjectives in Basaá [ɓasaá] (Bantu, A43: Cameroon) are morphologically nominal: they possess inherent noun class and distinguish singular and plural (Dimmendaal 1988, Hyman 2003). Additionally, adjectives in Basaá function as the head of their noun phrase, in a sense to be made precise below. This challenges the standard assumption that noun phrases or DPs are projected (or headed) by nouns. This paper provides an analysis of adjectives in Basaá which takes seriously the categorical status of Basaá adjectives as nouns, but proposes that these adjectives are syntactic predicates of the noun they modify, moving to their position as nominal heads by Predicate Inversion. The status of adjectives as nominal heads can be seen in the example below, in which the adjective occurs in the position of the head noun and controls concord on its dependents, including the phrase containing the noun it modifies (Hyman 2003):
2019
This paper provides an overview of lexical and clausal nominalization in Esahie, a relatively underdescribed and undocumented Kwa language. We show that in Esahie, lexical nominalizations lose all verbal properties whilst clausal nominalizations retain certain verbal features. Overall, nominalization in Esahie is typically a case of lexical rather than clausal nominalization. Lexical nominalizations in Esahie may take the form of simple affixation, parasynthesis or compounding. We also provide further empirical support against Aronoff’s (1976) Unitary Base Hypothesis and show that certain inflectional operators in Esahie belong to the group of word-class-changing inflectional markers (cf. Haspelmath 1996; Bauer 2004). Data used in this work emanates from a series of fieldworks conducted in the Western-North region of Ghana, and the argumentation approach adopted is descriptive.
Phrasal Identificational and Contrastive Focus in Dagbani
This paper examines the morpho-syntactic properties of phrasal identificational and contrastive focus in Dagbani, a Gur language. I show that ka and n can be used to encode phrasal identificational and contrastive focus. I argue that whilst the use of ka in encoding contrastive focus invariably involves an overt leftward movement of the focused constituent, the use of the n particle involves a covert movement. I further show that the focused constituents have demarcated syntactic slots they occupy within the sentence structure hypothesised to be the specifier position of the focus phrase located in the left periphery of the clausal structure. Constituents focused by ka and n are proposed to have contrastive information. I also show that the choice of ka or n is controlled by the grammatical role of the constituent that is focused; whilst ka focuses non-subject constituents and adjuncts, n focuses subject constituents. I conclude that Dagbani has overt contrastive focus marking with case differentiation.