Book review

Zygmunt Frajzyngier, A Grammar of Lele. Stanford Monographs in AfricanLanguages,W.R. Leben, Larry M. Hyman (Eds.), 2001, Stanford, California, 493 pp

Frajzyngier’s book is the first grammar of Lele, an East Chadic language spoken in Chad

(Hoffman, 1971; Newman, 1977). Given that Lele is a rather poorly studied language, the

publication of this grammar is very much welcome, even more so because the book is well

written, and it represents a wealth of first hand data that include examples from both oral

and written language. In this regard, the book ends with a 28 pages sample of Lele text

that is fully glossed. The same holds true of the numerous examples that are presented in

the book to illustrate the description. By itself, the amount of data compiled in this

book represents an incredible achievement, and a potential source for new advances

in the characterization of Chadic languages and more generally of the knowledge of

language.

A minor criticism, though, is that the author’s concern for precision and exhaustiveness

led him to adopt an outline that, at times, appears quite confusing. The book contains

twenty-eight chapters of rather unbalanced size. While some include up to twenty or more

subsections, others involve two or three subsections, only. In addition, there seems to be no

hierarchical ordering of the chapters. Granted this, and given that the book describes many

interesting and/or intriguing aspects of Lele, I will not attempt to summarize the whole

book here, nor will I provide a summary of individual chapters. Instead, I propose to

discuss some of the major features of the Lele grammar, which I think, from the perspective

of current developments in generative grammar, may awaken the curiosity of the reader to

know more about this language. Section 1 presents some salient morphophonological

properties of this language (cf. Chapters 1 and 2), Section 2 discusses the noun phrase (cf.

Chapters 3, 11, and 26), and Section 3 deals with word order patterns and clause structure

(cf. Chapters 4–25, and 27–28).

1. Morphophonology

As mentioned previously, Lele is a Chadic language spoken in Kelo and environs in

Chad. It is a tone language that involves a system of twenty-three consonants (p, b, , mb,

m, w, t, d, , nd, s, n, r, l, , w, k, g, , kp, gb, g, h). As one may notice from this inventory,

the language lacks the voiceless labial [f], or the voiced [v] or [z] even though it includes

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their corresponding stops. The vowel system includes five underlying vowels (i, e, a, o, u),

which may be short, long, oral, or nasal depending on the context. In addition, the language

allows both front-back and high-low vowel harmony. This process, however, seems to be

syntactically driven as it affects grammatical affixes that encode, among other things,

plurality and case dependencies. On the tonal level, Lele displays the three-way distinction

between high, mid, and low that involves both lexical and functional items, and has been

observed in other West African Language families (e.g., Kwa). The combination of these

tones leads to various contour tones involving falling or rising tones.

As Frajzyngier shows, there are two major phonological constraints that operate on the

word level: (i) consonant clusters are prohibited in both word-initial and word-final

positions, (ii) the segments [s], [d], [k], [j] cannot occur in word-final position. Accord-

ingly, an epenthetic vowel must surface in final position whenever an underlying structure

involves any of these segments.

2. The noun phrase

The Lele noun phrases generally manifest the head-modifier order in that the noun head

precedes the adjective, the numeral, and the demonstrative as shown in examples (1a–c).

Similarly, the example in (1d) indicates that the noun precedes the quantifier.1

(1) a. gol [kulba bore] [Noun-Adjective]

1sg see cow white

‘I saw a white cow’

b. . . .gına [wele subu] maanı na, [Noun-Numeral]

like day three Anaph Assc

‘About three days before. . ..’c. Tugu ta [Noun-Demonstrative]

town Dem-[F]

‘This town’

d. Ba -we pet [Noun-Quantifier]

man-Pl all

‘All men’

As indicated in (1d) Lele encodes plurality by means of the suffixes e or we, as in (2a–b),

or the infix (a) as in (2c). Such affixation may be accompanied with word internal changes.

(2) a. Lu ba lo be ‘horse(s)’

b. Gıra garwe ‘dog(s)’

c. Kormo karma ‘infant(s)’

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1 Anaph = Anaphor; Assc = Associateive; Com = Comment clause marker; Cop = Copula; Dem =

Demonstrative; Det = Determiner; [F] = Feminine; FM = Focus Marker; Fut = Future; Gen = Genitive; Hyp

= Hypothetical; Incept = Inceptive; Inter = Interrogative; Loc = Locative; [M] = Masculine; Neg = Negative; Pl =

Plural; Prep = Preposition; Vent = Ventive;

With regard to articles, Lele expresses definitness with the suffix ‘N’ as in (3).

(3) Kama + = Kama

water Det

‘The water’

In addition to encoding discourse anaphora, this definite article has various discourse

properties and shows a subject versus object asymmetry. The object is invariably

associated with the definite article provided it has been mentioned in previous

discourse. The subject, on the other hand, can only surface with the definite determiner

if it is a new topic. This would mean that the definite marker functions as a (new) topic

marker for the subject. It is not clear to me what formal properties allow this partition in

Lele, given that there seems to be nothing special with the Lele SVO structures that

makes this language a topic prominent language as it has been proposed for Mandarin

Chinese (Li and Thompson 1975a, b). If Lele were a topic prominent language, one

could suggest that the subject being sentence-initial is interpreted as old information

topic by default and need not be marked. This would contrast with a subject that is new

topic and therefore has to be overtly marked as such. The language may therefore fulfill

this requirement by merging the definite marker in the noun phrase. Be it so, one may

wonder how a topic that is encoded inside the noun phrase interacts with the clausal

topic. This is an interesting interface problem that hasn’t received much attention.

Hopefully, the data provided by works such as this grammar of Lele will allow a better

understanding of this phenomenon.

It is also worth mentioning that there seems to be no indefinite counterpart for the

definite suffix. Put differently, the language does not seem to involve any indefinite

determiner (or article). Instead, indefiniteness is expressed by various words, such as

bayndı ‘man’ for indefinite [+human] nouns, and kanya ‘thing’ for indefinite [�human]

nouns.

(4) Ba se e da kuso bayndı

Com Incept go Prep field man

ke-y ni da karga tugu ni

Gen-3M Loc Prep behind compound Loc

e poı je temle wen bugu

go break:Pl Vent corn fill bag

‘There he went into somebody’s field behind the compound, broke off corn [and]

filled his bag’

A question that one may ask in this regard is what determines such a definite versus

indefinite asymmetry and how to account for it? Or else can the numeral ‘one’ function as

indefinite determiner in certain contexts? Another question, which one may raise, is

whether the different noun modifiers as well as the elements presented in (1) through (4)

can co-occur and what order do they manifest. For instance, it has been shown, for certain

West African languages, that such elements display the sequence: Noun > Adjective >Numeral > Demonstrative > (In)definite > Quantifier (Aboh, 2004). The present book

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does not discuss these issues specifically, but the wealth of data that the author provides will

certainly inspire future work in this domain.

Another important aspect of the Lele noun system is the expression of possession. Like

nominal modifiers, the Lele possessive pronoun follows the noun as in kab-ı (hand-1sg,

‘my hand’). In addition to such simple possessive sequences, Lele manifests two other

sequences: Possessor > Possessee > Possessive pronoun as in (5a) and Possessee >Possessor > Genetive[kV]-Possessive pronoun as in (5b).

(5) a. Kırwe dıngaw-ro

leopard ferocity-3sg[F]

‘The ferocity of the leopard’

b. Kulba Canıge ke-y

cow Canige Gen-3sg[M]

‘Cow of Canige’

The sequence in (5a) is typical of inalienable possessive constructions, while sequence

(5b) surfaces for alienable possessive constructions. Using English words, the sequences in

(5) are comparable to the following examples leopard ferocity his for (5a) versus cow

John’s/of his for (5b). Given these word orders, it would be interesting to see how the two

sequences relate to each other and how one may derive from the other. From the surface of

it, and granting the analysis of possessive constructions as predicative phrases of which the

possessor is the subject and the possessee the complement (Kayne, 1994; Alexiadou and

Wilder, 1998), one suspects that the example (5b) involves some sort of complement

raising over the possessor. At this stage, this is a mere speculation and a detailed study of

possessive constructions in Lele, is needed for a better understanding of these constructions

across Chadic languages.

3. Clause structure

The discussion here focuses on basic word order patterns in the clausal domain.

3.1. The INFL-domain

On the clausal level, the general word order pattern of Lele is S-V-O-XP.

(6) a. Kire kil guju ke-y lı da

Kire sell millet Gen-3sg[M] yesterday

‘Kire sold his millet yesterday’

b. Gıkının e kasugu lı da

Gilkinin go market yesterday

‘Gilkinin went to market yesterday’

The distribution of pronominal forms is more intricate because the first and second

person singular and plural, and the unspecified human forms precede the verb, as in (7).

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(7) a. / gi / me / e

1sg/ 2sg[M]/2sg[F] go

‘I/you[M]/you[F] went’

b. ni/ ngu e

1pl[Excl]/ 2pl go

‘We [Excl]/ you went’

On the other hand, the third person singular and plural forms follow the verb as in (8).

(8) e dı/ du/ /ge

go 3sg[M]/ 3sg[F]/ 3pl

‘He/she/they went’

Like full DPs, object pronouns follow the verb. Granted that Lele doesn’t manifest

nominative versus accusative morphology (except for dı 3sg-Nom-[M] vs. iy 3sg-Acc-

[M]), the distinction between a pronominal object and a post-verbal pronominal subject

derives from word order.

1 If the post-verbal subject and object pronouns are plural and feminine, the pronoun

right adjacent to the verb is interpreted as subject and the following pronoun as object

(9a). The example (9b) shows that in such contexts, the third person masculine subject

can be non-overt, suggesting that this form has a null counterpart.

(9) a. Gol ge du

see 3pl 3sg[F]

‘They saw her’

Gol du

See 3sg[F]

‘He saw her’

2 If the post-verbal subject is third person feminine or plural and the object is first or

second person, the latter occupies the position right adjacent to the verb and the

subject surfaces in the position right adjacent to the post-verbal object.

(10) a. Gol gi ge

see 2sg[M] 3pl

‘They saw you’

b. Gol gi du

see 2sg[M] 3sg[F]

‘She saw you’

It appears from these data that Lele manifests subject-verb-object (SVO), verb-subject

(VSO), or verb-object-subject (VOS) word orders depending on the feature make-up of the

pronominal arguments. Put together, these facts point to the possible conclusion that Lele

involves distinct types of pronominal forms that can be characterized in terms of clitic

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versus weak/strong pronouns (Kayne, 1975; Cardinaletti and Starke, 1999; Aboh, 2004).

This conclusion is compatible with Frajzyngier’s observation that the discussed pronom-

inal forms are distinct from grammatical affixes (such as subject and object markers)

because they constitute separate phonological units. Unlike affixes, these forms are

pronounced as separate syllables, and they do not trigger vowel harmony. Granted this,

the distribution of these pronominal forms can derive from the interaction between clitic

movement and verb movement. Clitic movement is motivated by the impossibility of the

clitic to stand by itself and the necessity to find an appropriate host, while verb movement is

dictated by the need of the verb to check its inflectional features (e.g., tense, aspect,

mood).2 Under Pollock (1989) and Vikner (1997), that Lele involves verb movement seems

a reasonable approach because even though Lele does not display any case morphology, the

language does involve inflectional morphology that encodes past and future tenses. For

instance, the past tense form of the verb is characterized by the absence of the final vowel

on the verb form (except in cases where such deletion will violate the constraint on the

segments [s], [d], [j], [k], in word-final position), while future is signaled by insertion of the

vowel [e] in word-final position. Put another way, Lele appears to manifest some verbal

inflectional morphology. Under current view of generative grammar, these facts may

motivate the assumption that the Lele INFL involves strong features whose licensing

requires or triggers verb movement. Further study is needed on the inflectional domain of

Lele and Chadic languages.

3.2. The C-domain

This section discusses interrogative and focus constructions in Lele.3 Like certain West

African languages (e.g., Kwa languages), Lele manifests yes-no questions, which involve a

sentence-final question marker (11).

(11) Kiya hab kulba ke-y ga ?

Kiya find cow Gen-3sg[M] Inter

‘Did Kiya find his cow?

An important feature of Lele, though, is that the sentence-final question marker ga is

also required in wh-questions, in addition to the focus marker ba. This is illustrated by the

example (12) where the subject wh-phrase is fronted to the left of the focus marker ba, and

the question marker ga occurs in sentence-final position.

(12) Wey ba e ga ?

who FM go Inter

‘Who went away?

Lele question formation manifests a subject versus object asymmetry because subject

wh-phrases always front to the left of the focus marker located in the left periphery. Object

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2 Alternatively, it could be proposed that Lele involves a combination of V-to-I movement and VP raising,

which gives rise to the VSO versus VOS asymmetry, but I will not discuss such a possibility here.3 The interested reader is referred to the book for the discussion on cleft and topic constructions.

wh-phrases, however, occur in situ or ex situ, that is, to the left of the focus marker. These

strategies are illustrated by (13a–b).4

(13) a. Me ay wey ga

2sg[F] marry who Inter

‘Who did you marry?’

b. Me ba gol dı ga?

What FM see 3sg[M] Inter

‘What did he see?’

These sentences indicate that wh-phrases and focused phrases do not always compete

for the same position. In this regard, (13b) can be described as an instance of a focused wh-

phrase. These facts suggest that we might need to make a further distinction between the

formal licensing of pure wh-phrases one the one hand and focused wh-phrases, and focused

constituents on the other.

Similarly, focus in Lele leads to various strategies. For instance, contrastive focus

on the subject requires the agreeing strong pronoun followed by the subject as shown in

(14a). That the pronoun precedes the subject suggests that the latter remains in situ in

such constructions. However, non-contrastive (or new information) focus on the subject

requires that the latter surfaces in the left periphery to the left of the focus maker as shown

in (14b).

(14) a. Day Olkunsi ay tabal lay na kaje pori

3sg[M] Olkunsi took lance also Assc knife four

‘OLKUSIN took one lance and four throwing knives’

b. . . ..na laradı ba e hab-ı tumo na yaa be-ı

Hyp Chameleon FM go find-3sg[M] first Hyp say 3sg[M]

kolo ke-ı na ne gıdıre ba ma kıne ane ey lay

word 3sg-Gen Assc Cop moon FM die return-Fut leave-Fut still also

‘. . . if it is the CHAMELEON that finds me first and tells me his words, then

it is the MOON that would return after it has died’

As the discussion on wh-question has shown, focusing of the object (as well

as adjuncts) requires in situ or ex situ strategies. The ex situ strategy involves

the focus maker ba, which occurs to the right of the fronted focus phrase (15a).

Such constructions may optionally involve the copula ne immediately preceding the

focused phrase. In addition, the ex situ object focus tends to be definite. On the

other hand, the in situ object focus, which necessarily requires the presence of the

copula inside IP is read as indefinite (15b). Such constructions do not involve the focus

marker ba.

(15)a. (Ne) Canige ba gol-iy ne Gılkını e

Cop Canige FM 1sg see-3sg[M] Cop Gilkinin Neg

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4 Adjunct focusing also manifests the in situ versus ex situ asymmetry.

‘It was Canigue that I saw, it was not Gilkinin’

b. lee ne sıı

1sg eat-Fut Cop meat

‘I’d rather eat MEAT’

We therefore reach a situation whereby the subject-object asymmetry that we observed

in the case of wh-questions is replicated with regard to focusing: the subject must be

fronted to encode non-contrastive focus, while the object can appear in situ or in the left

periphery. In addition, the occurrence of the copula ne in object focusing points to the

interaction between focus movement and cleft constructions. Granting this description, it

appears that the Lele facts support Rizzi’s (1997) split-C hypothesis, whereby the focus

particle heads a focus projection within the complementizer system. In addition, these facts

also raise the question of whether the clause structure allows a unique C-type focus

position, or whether there is within the VP periphery a focus position that hosts the clause-

internal focused categories. According to Belletti (2001, 2002) the distribution of the

Italian post-verbal subject provides evidence for the existence of such VP-related focus

site. From the surface of it, the fact that Lele manifests in situ versus ex situ strategies for

both object wh-questions and focus phrases may be an additional argument to such a

proposal. Put differently, in a language like Lele, the in-situ object focus- or wh-phrase

raises to a VP-peripheral focus position, while the ex situ focus- or wh-phrase moves to the

left periphery of the clause. In Italian, the existence of these two focus positions is claimed

to derive from their specific discourse properties. The clause-external focus encodes

contrastive focus, while the clause-internal focus expresses new information focus. While

the Lele case appears to differ in this respect, the two focus positions do fill distinct

discourse functions in this language too. With regard to the subject, the clause-external (or

left peripheral) focus realizes non-contrastive focus, while the clause-internal focus

indicates contrastive focus. On the other hand, ex situ versus in situ object focusing

triggers the definite versus indefinite distinction. These facts clearly point to the syntax and

discourse-pragmatics interface, or more generally the interaction between grammar

structure and information structure.

To conclude, I would like to mention that more study is needed to confirm or disconfirm

the first approximation presented here. Frajzyngier does not discuss these issues speci-

fically in his book, nor does he adopts the generative approach, because his primary

concern is to provide a grammar of Lele. This objective has been fully achieved. In

addition, the amount of data that the author provides in this book certainly represents a

solid corpus for a subsequent detailed study of the clause structure and information

structure in Lele, and more generally in Chadic languages.

References

Aboh, E.O., 2004. The Morphosyntax of Complement-Head Sequences: Clause Structure and Word Order

Patterns in Kwa, Oxford University Press, New York.

Alexiadou, A., Wilder, C., 1998. Possessors, predicates and movement in the determiner phrase. Linguistics today,

Benjamins. Papers in Linguistics 17, 1–25.

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Belletti, A., 2001. Inversion as focalization. In: Aafke, H., Pollock, J.Y. (Eds.), Inversion in Romance and the

theory of Universal Grammar. Oxford University Press, New York.

Belletti, A., 2002. Aspects of the low IP area, In: Luigi, R. (Ed.), The Structure of IP and CP. The Cartography of

Syntactic Structures, vol. 2, Oxford University Press, New York.

Cardinaletti, A., Starke, M., 1999. The typology of structural deficiency: a case study of the three classes of

pronouns. In: Van Riemsdijk, H. (Ed.), Clitics in the Languages of Europe. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin.

Hoffman, C., 1971. Provisional check list of chadic languages. Chadic Newsletter (Special issue, January).

Kayne, R.S., 1975. French Syntax, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Kayne, R.S., 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Li, C., Thompson, S., 1975a. Subject and topic: a new typology of language. In: Li, C. (Ed.), Subject and Topic.

Academic Press, New York.

Li, C., Thompson, S., 1975b. The semantic function of word order: a case study in Mandarin. In: Li, C. (Ed.),

Word Order and Word Order Change. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Newman, P., 1977. Chadic Classification and Reconstruction. Afroasiatic Linguistics 5/1.

Pollock, J.-Y., 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 356–424.

Rizzi, L., 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In: Liliane, H. (Ed.), Elements of Grammar. Kluwer,

Dordrecht, Boston, London.

Vikner, S., 1997. V-to-I movement and inflection for person in all tenses. In: Liliane, H. (Ed.), The New

Comparative Syntax. Longman Linguistics Library, Longman, London, New York.

Enoch Olade Aboh

Amsterdam Center of Language (ACLC)

University of Amsterdam, Spuistraat 210

Amsterdam 1012 VT, The Netherlands

Available online 18 August 2004

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