Typological Features Template for Southern Dagaare

Mark Ali, University of Education, Winneba

Feature

Description

Phonological Features

Vowel inventory

a e i o u ɛ ɔ

Vowel harmony

Dagaare has advanced(/a/,/e/,/i/,/o/,/u/)and un-advanced (/a/,/υ/,/ι/,/ɔ/,/ɛ/) tongue root vowels.Only one group can occur within a simple word environment.e.g bie (child), tuo (bitter); pυɔ (stomach), tιε (tree).

Consonant inventory

b d f g gb gy h k kp ky l m n ŋ ŋm ny p r s t v w y z

Some people mark additional consonantal sounds.

Tone

The basic tone structures of Dagaare is L H and M. Although there appear to be a downstep no elaborate study has confirmed this.

Tone has both lexical and grammatical marking on words. eg:i.tú V(to dig)ii.tù V(to follow), iii. tù V(to narrate); i.má PARTC(well),ii.mà V(to stick) iii.mǎ N(mother)and i. báá N(dog) ii.bàà V(to grow), bàá N(pond/stream).

Syllable Structure

Dagaare has the following syllable structures: CV; CVV,CVVV,CVC, CVCV, VC, VVCV

Morpho-syntactic Features

morphological classification (1)

morphological classification (2)

head independant marking as in doolee, doo (man), lee (small) = boy

Nominal Phrases

syntactic structure

DET-POSS N ADJ- DEM- INT- QUANT- LOC- NP

nominal modification

The nominal phrase may be headed by a noun or a pronoun. When the noun phrase is headed by a noun it can be modified by any one of the following modifying elements- adjective, demonstrative, article, quantifier, intensifier, locative or postposition, or another noun phrase.The following examples show how modification is represented in the language

nominal specification

There are determiners, demonstratives(distal and proximal), intensifiers,quantifiers and numerals in Dagaare.Deixis and reference are expressed using the nominal forms determiners(articles),possessives, demonstratives and pronouns together with some particles.The following are some examples of each category of specification:

Determiners:DEF-'a', INDEF-'kanga':Demonstratives:nyɛ,lɛ,nyɛɛ, banang,etc; Quantifiers:ayi,ata,anaare,etc;Intensifiers:paa,yaga

possession

Possession is not overtly marked in Dagaare.It is illustrated by the use of possessive pronoun and juxtaposition.A (possessive)pronoun may occur with a head noun to indicate possession,e.g. "fo bie" meaning "your child".Where two nouns occur in juxtaposition, the first noun is the possessive noun and the second is the head noun,e.g."Ayuo bie" meaning "Ayuo`s child".Ayuo bie

“Ayuo's child” 
 Ayuo  	bie 
 ayuo  	bie 
 Ayuo  	child 
 N  	         N 
 Generated in TypeCraft.

pronominal system

Dagaare pronouns are marked for subject and object function. For personal pronouns,Dagaare makes a two-way distinction between subject pronouns-strong forms and weak forms. For example,the first person singular subject 'n' is a weak form.Its strong counterpart is 'maa' and its objective or accusative form is 'ma'.The following is a list of the pesonal pronouns of Dagaare in their subject and object forms respectively:1st person singular:N(subj),ma(obj);2nd person singular:fo(sub),fo(obj);3rd person singular:o(sub),o(obj);1st person plural:te(sub),te(obj);2nd person plural:yɛ(sub),yɛ(obj):3rd person plural:ba(sub),ba(obj).The strong forms of the personal pronouns in their respective order are as follows:1st person-SG(maa),PL(tenee):2nd person-SG(foo),PL(yɛnee),3rd person-SG(onɔ),PL(bana for human;ana for non-human).

Verbal Phrases

word order

The following sentence illustrates the basic word order which is SVO

TAM

infinitival forms

verbal constructions

There are serial verb constructions in Dagaare.

Iri gaa gaŋ.

“Get up and go to sleep.”

Iri

iri

get_up

V

gaa

go

V2

gaŋ

sleep

V3

Adpositions

Complementation

Special Properties of Soutern Daagare