Dagaare and the Gur Languages

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Dagaare and the Gur Dagaare and the Gur Languages Languages Dr. A. Bodomo Dr. A. Bodomo The University of Hong The University of Hong Kong Kong <[email protected]> <[email protected]>

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Dagaare and the Gur Languages. Dr. A. Bodomo The University of Hong Kong . Dagaare and the Gur Languages. 1. Location and classification: Dagaare and the Gur languages are situated in the interior parts of West African sub-continent. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Dagaare and the Gur Languages

Dagaare and the Gur Dagaare and the Gur LanguagesLanguages

Dr. A. BodomoDr. A. Bodomo

The University of Hong KongThe University of Hong Kong<[email protected]><[email protected]>

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Dagaare and the Gur LanguagesDagaare and the Gur Languages

1. Location and classification:

– Dagaare and the Gur languages are situated in the interior parts of West African sub-continent.

– They cover countries such Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and the northern parts of the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria.

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Location of

the GurGur family of languages

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The most prominent languages of the Gur family are in the Mabia subgroup.

We focus on the Mabia subgroup.

Bodomo (1994)

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TheThe MabiaMabia languages are divided into languages are divided into fivefive main main groups. These are:groups. These are:

i. Western Mabia

ii. Northern Mabia

iii. Central Mabia

iv. Southern Mabia

v. Eastern Mabia

Bodomo (1994)

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i. Western Mabia • It includes Dagaare, Waale, Birifor and Safaliba.

ii. Northern Mabia• It includes just Moore and its dialectal forms.

iii. Central Mabia (also called Gurenne).

• It includes Frafra, Nankani (Buli, Konni) and Nabit.

iv. Southern Mabia• It includes Dagbane, Mampruli and Nanuni

v. Eastern Mabia• It is composed of Kusaal and Talni.

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2. Some facts about the languages2. Some facts about the languages

a. There are no clear boundaries between the languages, but a continuum.

• E.g. Mampruli may relate to Dagbane or to Kusaal; i.e., Manpruli could belong to Southern Mabia or Eastern Mabia.

b. Typological features:• i.e., phonological, morphological, and syntactic

features

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Phonology:The languages are marked by preponderance of

consonants and a scarcity of vowel phonemes. There are also syllabic nasal usage and tone representation.

i. Consonants:

– Some consonants are in double articulation.• E.g. voiceless labio-velar stop: /kp/ in ‘to die’

– Regular allophones often involve /d/ and /r/, and /g/ and // across the various languages.

– There are limited cases of free variation.• E.g. /h/ and /z/ in the Dagaare word, / ‘all’

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ii. Vowels:

– There is the feature of vowel harmony (based on Advanced Tongue Root (ATR)) that divides the languages into harmonizing and non-harmonizing languages.

• harmonizing languages: Western Mabia (e.g. Dagaare and Waale)

• non-harmonizing languages: The rest of the group

– Front rounded vowels and back unrounded vowels are absent in these languages, except in phonetically conditioned environments.

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iii. Syllabic nasality:

– This is a typological feature in the languages.

– Syllabic nasals are often realized as pronouns and particles. E.g.:

• the first person pronoun /N/ in Dagaare as in ‘my father’, , “my head” and

• the particle, -N, in Dagaare which is a cliticised form of the polarity marker, la.

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iv. Tone:

– Gur languages are tone languages.

– They are primarily two-toned with cases of downstep (H) in some of the languages.

– tones express both lexical and grammatical oppositions. Examples in Dagaare:

• in the verbs, ‘push’ and ‘buy’

• in the declarative and hortative readings of pronouns e.g. ‘He went home’

‘He should go home’

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v. Syllable structure:– Gur languages usually manifest open syllables.

– Usually, a close syllable can be reconstructed into an open syllable.

• e.g. (CVC) ‘to leave’ could become (CV.CV).

Morphology:i. Noun classes:– In noun classification, most Niger-Congo languages

use a system of class prefixes, but

– Gur languages use a system of class suffixes.

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– The noun classification is typically based on singular/plural alternations (in relation to the root).

– That is, most nouns exist in three forms: the root, the singular, and the plural.

• E.g. in the Dagaare word for woman/wife:

- (root), (singular), (plural)

– In this example the singular/plural affixes are -a / -ba.

– All nouns that exhibit this (-a / -ba) pattern are categorized into one class.

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ii. Verb morphology:– In most of the languages, there is a regular form of

marking perfective and imperfective aspect by suffixes on the verbs.

– The perfective and imperfective suffixes regularly respond to the vowel harmony feature for languages that have this.

Syntax:i. Word order:– Most Gur languages exhibit the Subject Verb

Object order in their basic sentence patterns.

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ii. Verb serialization:

– A syntactic construction in which two or more lexical verbs may share arguments without intervening connectors.

• Examples in Dagaarei. O de la gan ko ma

3sg. take FACT. book give 1sg.‘S/he gave me the book.’

ii. O da daa ma la 3sg PAST push 1sg FACT. caus.fall ‘S/he pushed me down.’

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3. Description of some Gur 3. Description of some Gur languageslanguagesMoore• It is the language of the Mossi.

• It is the de facto national language in Burkina Faso.

• It is the most prominent of the Gur languages in terms of the number of speakers and its political importance.

• It is spoken by about 5 million people in Burkina Faso and about 1 million more in neighboring countries such as Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo.

• It is more closely related to Dagara, a variant of the Dagaare language.

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Dagbani• Including Nanuni, Dagbani is spoken by about 1½ million

people in Ghana.

• It is a trade language in and around Tamale, the fourth largest town in Ghana.

• It is a major language of education and literacy in Dagbon, home of the Dagomba.

• It is taught in various undergraduate programmes at universities in Ghana.

• Dagbane is more closely related to Mampruli than all the

other languages.

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Dagaare• Dagaare, including Waale and Birifor, is spoken in

north-western Ghana around towns like Wa, Tuna, Jirapa, Lawra and Nandom.

• It is also spoken in Burkina Faso around towns like Dano and Dissin.

• Native speakers of Dagaare number up to 2 million.

• It is taught in primary and secondary schools in Dagao, homeland of the Dagaaba, and at universities in Ghana and Burkina Faso.

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Gurenne• Including Frafra, Nankanne and Nabit, Gurenne is also

has a large number of native speakers, numbering about a million.

• It is the language of Bolgatanga, one of the cosmopolitan towns in northern Ghana.

• It is fast becoming a lingua franca in north eastern Ghana for speakers of different languages such as Kusaal, Kasem, Mampruli, Talni, etc. in the Bolgatanga metropolitan area.

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Kusaal• It is the language of the Kusaasi.

• It is spoken by about 250,000 people in the extreme north-eastern Ghana around towns like Bawku.

• It is an important literacy language in the area.

• It is related to Mampruli.

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Mampruli• It is the language of the Mamprussi.

• It is spoken by about 100,000 people around towns such as Gambaga, Nalerigu, and Walewale.

• It is very closely related to Kusaal and Dagbane.

• It is quite intelligible to speakers Dagbane and Kusaal.

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Buli• It is the language of the Bulsa.

• It has about 65,000 speakers in and around Sandema.

• It is closely related to the much smaller language, Konni, but quite distinct from all the other major Gur languages.

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Kasem• It is the language of the Kasena.

• It belongs to the Grusi subgroup along with other languages such as Sisaali, Chakali, Tampulma, Kabre, Vagla, and Mo.

• It is spoken around towns such as Navrongo in Ghana, and in adjacent settlements in Burkina Faso.

• It is spoken by approximately 300,000 people.

• Kasem, like Dagaare, was one of the first literary languages of northern Ghana, having benefited from early missionary activities.

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Sisaali (or Isaaleng)• It is the language of the Sisaala.

• It is spoken around the towns of Tumu, Gwellu and Lambussie in Ghana, and also in adjoining areas of Burkina Faso.

• It is spoken by about 200,000 people.

• It is hardly intelligible with the other languages. However, many speakers of Sisaali speak Dagaare as a second language.

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Konkomba• It belongs to the Gurma group along with languages

such as Moba and Bassari.

• It is also called Likpakpalnli.

• It is spoken by about 500,000 people.

• Many speakers of this language speak Dagbane as a second language in their homeland around Saboba and Zabzugu.

• It is taught in primary schools and there are many literacy programmes involving Konkomba.

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4. Conclusion4. Conclusion

• Most of these languages are being used for educational purposes in the communities.

• Hausa is often thought by many people to be an effective lingua franca in the Gur speaking area but this is hardly a fact.

• There are serious attempts at functional literacy and mass communication in all these indigenous languages.

• Gradually, awareness is being raised about the importance of the mother tongues as important languages of mass communication for socio-economic development in this part of West Africa.

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Further ReadingFurther Reading • Barker, P., Peoples, Languages and Religion in Northern Ghana, Ghana Accra:

Evangelical Committee, 1986• Bodomo, A. B., Dagaare: Languages of the World Materials No. 165. Munchen, Germany:

Lincom Europa, 2000• Bodomo, A. B., The Structure of Dagaare, Stanford Monographs in African Languages,

Stanford, USA: CSLI publications, 1997• Bodomo, A. B., “Language, Culture, and History in Northern Ghana: An Introduction to the

Mabia Linguistic Group”, Nordic Journal of African Studies, vol. 3:2, 1994• Goody, J., The Social Organisation of the LoWiili, London: IAS, 1967• St. John-Parsons, D., Legends for Northern Ghana, London: Longmans, Accra: SPC,

1958.• Manessy, G., Les Langues Oti/Volta, Paris: SELAF, 1975• Manessy, G., “Les Langues Voltaiques,” in Les Langues dans le Monde Ancien et

Moderne, edited by Jean Perrot, Paris: CNRS, 1981• Naden, A., “Language, History, and Legend in Northern Ghana,” Sprache und Geschichte

in Afrika 9 (1988)• Naden, A., “Gur,” in Niger-Congo, edited by Bendor-Samuel, Lanham, MD: Universities

Press of America, 1989• Nikiema, E., Moore: Languages of the World Materials No. 383. Munchen, Germany:

Lincom Europa, forthcoming• Swadesh et al. “A Preliminary Glottochronology of the Gur Languages,” Journal of West

African Languages 3 (1966)• Tuurey, G., Introduction to the Mole-speaking Community, Wa: Catholic Press, 1987

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Thank you!Thank you!