ABSTRACT The work discusses the use of stylistic devices and other devices in presidential campaign messages in Ghana. The author selects three of the 2008 presidential campaign speeches of Prof. Atta Mills, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom and Nana Akuffo- Addo the then presidential candidates of National Democratic Congress, Conversion People’s Party, and New Patriotic Party respectively for the analysis. The analysis is grounded on Fairclough’s (1995) in Critical Discourse Analysis, claiming that ...
ABSTRACT Humour is an integral part of our daily lives, however, it is one of the least studied phenomena. This thesis, therefore, discusses humour in Akan, a Kwa language of the Niger-Congo language family spoken in Ghana. The study focused on providing an ethnographic and ethnopragmatic description of the nature of humour and how it manifests in the language. Using the Incongruity theory (c.f. Kant, Cicero, Schopenhauer), the study provides explanations on why people find certain circumstan...
ABSTRACT This study investigates language Choice in the Ɔkere speech community in the Eastern region of Ghana, Ɔkere is a Guan language belonging to the Kwa language family. The study gives a broad perspective of language contact involving two unequal languages and the linquistic outcomes. This is done in reference to language shift and language maintenance. Instruments employed for data collection were questionnaires and unstructured interviews. Data was sourced from homes, churches, schoo...
ABSTRACT This study was designed to examine the differences between diploma and degree holder secondary school English language teachers in implementing competency based language teaching in secondary schools in Tanzania. Specifically, the study aimed at assessing the attitudes and general knowledge towards competency based language teaching, examining the potential differences that exist between diploma and degree holder English language teachers’ delivery skills and assessing the coverag...
ABSTRACT Relationship in linguistics is very essential. There are two types of relationship in linguistics: paradigmatic and syntagmatic. Syntagmatic relations are based on the linear character of speech. They enable language to function as a means of communication. The syntagmatics of noun modifiers are therefore the relation of noun modifiers with the HN and each other. Adopting Dependency Theory from Hays (1972), we base our argument on the hypothesis that the occurrence of any modifier in...
ABSTRACT Compounding is a very productive word formation process in Ewe. Works in Ewe grammar (Ofori 2002; Duthie 1996) only referenced it as one of the word formation processes in the language and have not done an in-depth morphological and phonological study on the phenomenon such as pursued in the current thesis. The purpose of this study is to investigate compounding with the view of providing a broad description of the empirical facts of compounds in Ewe. The study examines: the types of...
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...
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 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 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...
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...