ABSTRACT This thesis explores the language of a three year old Safaliba-speaking child from a phonological perspective. The findings of this work are largely based on primary data collected during a two month field-work between December 2014 and January 2015. Primary data was collected by means of elicitation: interviews and discussions recorded using an audio sound recorder. Native speaker intuition was relied on for gathering, transcribing, and analysing the data. Even though the study is d...
This thesis explores the concept of negation in Akan, a Kwa language. It focuses on how negation is marked in Akan and on negative polarity items. Negation in Akan is marked by a homorganic nasal. This marker is prefixed to the verb stem. Adopting the X-Bar theory in the analysis of data on negation, the study discusses the types and scope of negation. Negation projects a negative phrase (NegP) following Saah’s (1995) account. There are two categorizations of negation types— syntact...
ASEDA Mede aseda kñseñ ma Otweduampõn wõ mpñnmpñnsoõ a õde me abñduru yi, animuonyam ne nkamfoõ yñ no dea. Prõfñsa Kofi Agyekum, Prõfñsa Kwesi Yankah, Prõfñsa Akosua Anyidoho, meda mo ase pii sñ mobirii mo mogya ani, sirii pñ hwññ dwumadie yi. Akyerñkyerñfoõ nkaeñ a moboaa me; Dr. Reginald Dua, Dr. Charles Owu-Ewie, Dr. Grace Diaba, Dr. Clement Appah, Dr. Amuzu, Owura Apenteng-Sackey, Owura Asamoa, Owura Amoa, Owura Adomako, Awuraa Patience Obeng, Onyame nhyira mo ne ...
ABSTRACT A noun phrase is a phrase that behaves like a noun. The head of a noun phrase is technically the noun. In grammar, a noun phrase functions as subject and as an object. The noun phrase is found in the grammar of all languages and, therefore, this thesis aims to examine it in Ɔkere, a Guan language which is spoken in Ghana. This thesis examines the constituent structure of the noun phrase in Ɔkere, with a primary focus on determining the constraints on head-noun modification in the ...
ABSTRACT Until recently, the concept that governed our view about metaphor was that, it is a figure of speech in which there is comparison between two unlike entities characterised by the schematic form A is B. For this reason, we thought we can get along perfectly well without using it. Today, a new approach to the study of metaphors by the cognitive scientists and linguistists has produced new and important results. Metaphor is now defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of ...
ABSTRACT This study is couched within the framework of Basic Linguistic Theory. It takes a descriptive approach to the study of the typology of questions and their responses in the Efutu dialect of the Awutu-Efutu language (Guan, Kwa). It is further aimed at establishing the relevance of focus in questions and to find out how question intonation and questions particles interact. The typology of questions was based on the kind of responses the questions solicit. Three types of questions were i...
ABSTRACT This study investigates the expression of force-dynamics in Akan (Talmy 2000). Two main types of causatives can be found in the language, namely non-periphrastic causatives (lexical causatives and cause-effect SVCs) and periphrastic causatives (analytic causatives). The study examines the syntactic properties of causatives and shows that while lexical causatives and cause-effect SVCs involve a monoclausal structure, the analytic causative displays a complex (bi-clausal) structure. I...
ABSTRACT This study aims to present a particular view of second language pedagogy. Teaching English as a second language is a quite complex task for a teacher. Language learning should be more fun and enjoyable for students to learn. Teachers need to have effective teaching strategies in order for students to grasp better in learning English. The objective of this study is to investigate the methods of teaching used by Dr. Farooq Kperogi on how to attract interest in learning English as a se...
ABSTRACT The African has been a creator, performer and a lover of verbal art for centuries. He has created and handed down (orally) to successive generations an organic library of songs, poems, narratives, proverbs, riddles and many other oral literary forms, such as appellations. In our African societies, appellations, as well as many other oral literary forms, do not only show their aesthetic qualities and values through their literary devices, but also they contribute in the moral up-brin...
ABSTRACT The main goal of this study is to describe the morphological properties of C’lela; a Niger-Congo, Western Kainji language spoken in the eastern part of Kebbi State, Nigeria. The study mainly adopted the classic descriptive model of linguistics in particular to explore and highlight the morphological processes and properties of C’lela. The relevant data for the study were sourced mainly from the extant literature on C’lela as well as the field data. By and large, the primary dat...
ABSTRACT The main goal of this study is to describe the morphological properties of C’lela; a Niger-Congo, Western Kainji language spoken in the eastern part of Kebbi State, Nigeria. The study mainly adopted the classic descriptive model of linguistics in particular to explore and highlight the morphological processes and properties of C’lela. The relevant data for the study were sourced mainly from the extant literature on C’lela as well as the field data. By and large, the primary dat...
Introduction This work is a comparative study of the numeric system of two of the most widely spoken languages not only in Nigeria but Africa and the world as a whole. It is to explain the styles adopted by the speakers of both languages in expressing numeral situations. In the early days of some comparison between languages, some scholars had argued that there was such a strong linguistic affinity between Hausa and English numerals so much that the two languages could have common meaning ...
ABSTRACT The study is a synchronic sociolinguistic analysis of personal names among Ewe people in Ghana. It treats as its background Egblewogbe’s (1977) thesis in which he describes vividly the various types of Ewe names, their linguistic structure and their semantics. In this study a variationist sociolinguistic analysis is made to determine age, gender and regional and variations in personal names being given among the Ewe people. Four types of data were collected: registers from three Se...
ABSTRACT This thesis explores the Verbal Group (VG) of Buli, a Gur language spoken in northern Ghana, with focus on three main aspects: the morphology of the Buli verb, the grammatical functions of Buli verbal particles, and the distribution of such verbal particles in Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs). Having its underpinnings in Functional Grammar (and skewed towards Functional Typological Syntax), a theory that views language as a set of tools for communication, its data is drawn mainly fro...
ABSTRACT The study is a synchronic sociolinguistic analysis of personal names among Ewe people in Ghana. It treats as its background Egblewogbe’s (1977) thesis in which he describes vividly the various types of Ewe names, their linguistic structure and their semantics. In this study a variationist sociolinguistic analysis is made to determine age, gender and regional and variations in personal names being given among the Ewe people. Four types of data were collected: registers from three Se...