More on in situ WH- and focus constructions in Hausa

Hausa is conventionally analyzed as having only one strategy for both focus and wh-constructions--fronting, with special inflectional marking on the TAM. Recently, however, some new facts have emerged which demonstrate that focus can also occur IN SITU, with a general TAM (Jaggar 2001:496-98; Green & Jaggar 2003). Hausa in situ wh-questions and focus constructions are especially common with adverbial (especially locative) elements and/or nonverbal predicates and so are more restricted in their distribution than the ex situ strategies, but they represent an interesting new problem which requires extensive study of naturally occurring discourse and detailed syntactic analysis. The Hausa facts also need to be viewed in the wider comparative-historical context of the syntax of in situ focus and wh-constructions in related West Chadic languages

The Hausa perfective tense-aspect used in wh-/focus constructions and historical narratives: a unified account

In this paper I revisit and elaborate some of the ideas I outlined in the earlier paper, concentrating on the semantic characteristics of the paired Perfective tense-aspects in a major (universal) discourse context—spontaneously-produced past-time narrative. The main focus is on the role of the paradigm known traditionally (and unfortunately) as the “Relative Perfective”, a set which is in partial complementary distribution with the “General/Neutral Perfective”. This specially inflected tense-aspect form is the one exploited at discourse-level to assert prominent events on the time-axis in foregrounded narrative sequences, but it is also required in classic clause-level wh-constructions, i.e., wh-interrogatives, declarative focus constructions, and relative clauses, operations which often share structural properties across languages. The central claim is that the fronted focus/wh- constructions and pivotal foregrounded portions of past-time narratives utilize the same specialized Perfective tense-aspect morphology because they achieve the same discourse-pragmatic goals—they all supply the most communicatively PROMINENT and focal NEW information

Quantification and polarity: negative adverbial intensifiers ('never ever', 'not at all', etc.) in Hausa

Hausa has a typologically interesting but poorly understood set of quantifying time and degree adverbs—equivalent to English 'never ever', 'not at all', etc.—which behave as negative polarity items and enhance the pragmatic impact of a negative utterance (both verbal and non-verbal). The functional distribution of these adverbial intensifiers is unusual, however, in that some are "bipolar", i.e., they can express opposite (minimal/maximal) values according to whether they occur in negative or positive syntactic environments, with the minimal intensifiers operating at the negative pole. An intensifier such as dàɗai, for example, can mean either 'never' (negative) or 'always' (positive), and other modifiers, e.g., atàbau, can express these same temporal meanings in addition to 'absolutely'. This paper provides a unified account of this natural functional class of adverbs, and is seen as a contribution to cross-linguistic research into polarity items and their licensing contexts

The Hausa "Grade 5/Causative-Efferential" Verb: Causative, Noncausative, or Both? A Critical Assessment Of Previous Analyses

This critical review evaluates various semantic classifications of the so-called derivative "Grade 5" Hausa verb. Members of this morphologically distinct class are all transitive but express a diverse range of meanings, e.g., kwantar̃ = Grade 5 ‘lay (down)’ < intransitive kwântaa ‘lie (down)’, sayar̃ = Grade 5 ‘sell’ < transitive sàyaa ‘buy’, jeefar̃ = Grade 5 ‘throw away’ < transitive jeefàa 'throw’. Previous analyses have attempted to explain these interpretations in terms of a semantic causative and/or noncausative framework. In this paper, I conclude that both the 'lie/lay' and "caused-change-of-possession" 'buy/sell' verb-pairs represent stereotypic causative alternations, as distinct from the 'throw/throw away' "change of location" class which falls short of expressing causation

The blacksmiths of Kano City: A study in tradition, innovation and entrepreneurship.

This thesis examines the factors involved in the expansion, during the colonial and post-colonial periods, of a traditional, i.e. pre-European craft specialism - blacksmithing, in Kano City, Nigeria - and its subsequent conversion into a modem metal-working industry. In doing so, it sheds new light on the general proposition that such traditional crafts necessarily decline before the technological onslaught of colonialism. A notable feature of the recent development of this craft has been the differential responses of the various clusters of blacksmiths to the new socio-economic factors introduced by the British. Of these groups, the most far-reaching changes have occurred in that located within the Central Market area of Kano City, and it is the behaviour of these craftsmen - and/or trader-entrepreneurs which provides the focus of this study. These dynamic individuals effected major advances in the manufacture and marketing of ironwares, and transformed the nature of the industry here. Attention is also given to the reason why the rapid and positive reaction to the new economic opportunities of the time was limited mainly to this group. Despite the changes in economic organisation it is argued, resultant breaches in indigenous patterns of social relationships have apparently been relatively slight. At the same time, the colonial presence, and the reorientation in production which took place later on in the City, both had important repercussions especially on urban-rural craft relations. Village blacksmithing communities, hitherto largely self-supporting, were drawn more and more into the economic orbit of the City, and particularly towards the Central Market complex which became an increasingly influential node in the metalware trade

Walking through volcanic mud : the 2,100 year-old Acahualina footprints (Nicaragua) II: the Acahualina people, environmental conditions and motivation

We analyzed bare human footprints in Holocene tuff preserved in two pits in the Acahualinca barrio in the northern outskirts of Managua (Nicaragua). Lithology, volcanology, and age of the deposits are discussed in a companion paper (Schmincke et al. Bull Volcanol doi: 10.1007/s00445-008-0235-9, 2008). The footprint layer occurs within a series of rapidly accumulated basaltic–andesitic tephra that is regionally correlated to the Masaya Triple Layer Tephra. The people were probably trying to escape from a powerful volcanic eruption at Masaya Caldera 20 km farther south that occurred at 2.1 ka BP. We subdivided the swath of footprints, up to 5.6 m wide, in the northern pit (Pit I) into (1) a central group of footprints made by about six individuals, the total number being difficult to determine because people walked in each other’s footsteps one behind the other and (2) two marginal groups on either side of the central group with more widely spaced tracks. The western band comprises tracks of three adjacent individuals and an isolated single footprint farther out. The eastern marginal area comprises an inner band of deep footprints made by three individuals and, farther out, three clearly separated individuals. We estimate the total number of people as 15–16. In the southern narrow and smaller pit (Pit II), we recognize tracks of ca. 12 individuals, no doubt made by the same group. The group represented in both pits probably comprised male and female adults, teenagers and children based on differences in length of footprints and of strides and depth of footprints made in the soft wet ash. The smallest footprints (probably made by children) occur in the central group, where protection was most effective. The footprint layer is composed of a lower 5–15-cm thick, coarse-grained vesicle tuff capped by a medium to fine-grained tuff up to 3 cm thick. The surface on which the people walked was muddy, and the soft ash was squeezed up on the sides of the foot imprints and between toes. Especially, deep footprints are mainly due to local thickening of the water-rich ash, multiple track use, and differences in weight of individuals. The excellent preservation of the footprints, ubiquitous mudcracks, sharp and well-preserved squeeze-ups along the margins of the tracks and toe imprints, and the absence of raindrop impressions all suggest that the eruption occurred during the dry season. The people walked at a brisk pace, as judged from the tight orientation of the swath and the length of the strides. The directions of a major erosional channel in the overlying deposits that probably debouched into Lake Managua and the band of footprints are strictly parallel, indicating that people walked together in stride along the eastern margin of a channel straight toward the lake shore, possibly a site with huts and/or boats for protection and/or escape