The Syntax and Semantics of Relative Clauses in Kusaal

This paper looks at the syntax and semantics of relative clause constructions in Kusaal, a Mabia (Gur) language spoken in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Although extensive work has been done on sister Mabia languages on this topic, little can be said of same in relation to Kusaal. This paper presents a comprehensive discussion on the various elements, functions, and formations of Kusaal relative clauses and, among other things, shows that the language has both in-situ internally-headed relative clauses and left-headed internally-headed relative clauses (Hiraiwa et al. 2017). This is carried out with data collected on fieldwork, in addition to the author’s own native speaker intuitions

Serial verb reduplication in the Mabia languages of West Africa

This paper introduces and discusses the notion of Serial Verb Reduplication (SVR) in two Mabia languages of West Africa, Dagaare and Kusaal. The authors show that the phenomenon of SVRs, though under-represented in the literature, has a wide scope occurrence in natural language usage within serializing languages. Theoretically, two lexical semantic notions: semantics of verbs (verb meaning) and pluraction, are advanced to explain the intricacies of the syntax and semantics of SVRs. The paper identifies two groups of SVRs: canonical SVRs and pluractional SVRs and proposes that semantically bleached verbs can only be reduplicated in pluractional benefactive and causative SVRs in these languages

On Nominalizing the Serial Verb in Mabia Languages

Verb serialization and nominalization are two prominent phenomena in descriptive and theoretical syntax. This paper raises a number of issues that result from the interaction between these two widely attested phenomena in the literature: nominalization (e.g. Chomsky 1970, Roeper 1993, Alexiadou 2011, Lieber 2016) and verb serialization (e.g. Foley and Olson 1985, Baker 1989, Bodomo 1993, Lord 1993, Collins 1997, Stewart 2001, Foley 2010, Haspelmath 2016). Based on data from Dagaare and Kusaal, two Mabia languages of West Africa, this paper analyses a serial verb construction which is a type of complex predicate construction in which all the verbs in a series are nominalized, with only one of the verbs carrying the nominalization affix (Bodomo and Oostendorp 1993, Bodomo 2004, Hiraiwa, Bodomo 2008, and Abubakari 2011). Such a rare complex predicate construction is then the basis for renewed questions about the nature of complex predicatehood, diathetic syntactic alternations, and lexical categorial differences involving nouns and verbs across languages. The paper proposes a syntactic representation of these nominalized serial verbal predicates in which the verbal predicates are basically interpreted as VPs headed by a nomP functional projection.  Semantically, we propose that nominalized serial verbs, like their purely verbal counterparts, express a complex event. It is thus concluded that while verbal and nominal predicates obtain from the same minimal constructs, the difference between pure serial verbs and nominalized serial verbs is due to the fact that a semantic feature, [+nom], parallel to the syntactic functional projection, nomP, imposes nominal features on the whole complex. This analysis is extended to complex verbal constructions in English

Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL

Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL

Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL

Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL

Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL