THE STRUCTURE 05' SENTENCES in Iviendb
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* THE STRUCTURE 05' SENTENCES IN iviENDB Gordon Innes ProQuest Number: 10731382 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10731382 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT Word classes are set up by assigning to a. single class those words which occur in the same test frame (or set o±' tes frames), those frames being chosen which yield these word d m kij [el-8asf-fLi~ea^ionr-m©-s^t^can:^niL^nt-#or?) the subsequent description of sentence structures. This classification differs markedly from that of all Mende grammars, perhaps especially in that here no class of verbs is recognised. A phrase like nya hale ( ~), utreat me with medicine", which has always been described as the imperative of the verb hale, preceded by the object pronoun nya, is here regarded as a possessive complex. Also treated as a possessive complex is the phrase nya hale ( _), limy medicine” , which is traditionally described as consisting of the possessive pronoun nya and the noun hale o The pair nya^hale ( ), "treat rae with medicine and nya hale (""„)* ,fiay medicine”, are here held to differ ±i respect of the kind of possessive complex, ( called here subjective and objective complexes respectively), as is showi by the difference of tone pattern, and not in respect of a difference of the word class of hale. Syntactically comparable with the pair/nyev hale ( ) is the pair iiya woli ( )3 "my e a r 1' (of my own body) nya woli ( _), ”my ear” (e.g. a cow’s ear which belongs to m A description is given of all the types of comylei, both subjective and objective, which are distinguished* A small number of types of simple initiating sentences is recognised, and the minimum sentence of each type is described in terms of the number of contrastive positions which, it contains, the relative order of thesej, and the word classes and complex types that occur in each. Expansions of each minimum sentence are then similarly describedo c o m m a s Pages Introduction 1 - 14 Chapter 1 Word Classes Ip - 42 Chapter 2 Pet e-words and hale-words 43 -”87 Chapter 3 Complexes 88 - 131 Chapter 4 the Structure of Sentences 132 - 236 Conclusion 236 - 237 THE STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES IN MENUS Introduction The term Ivlende [Mende] , or, in the earlier literature, Mendi, should strictly speaking he.applied only to the country; the language is Mende...yiei, and the people are Mendehla (singular Mendemo) « Europeans have applied the term to hoth the language and the people, and as this has now been established usage for several decades, the term will be so used here. Apart from a small section in Liberia, the Mende- speaking area lies wholly within Sierra Leone, where the Mende constitute the largest, and the politically most important, speech community. They inhabit an area of nearly 12,000 square miles in the S.E* and S.W. Provinces of the Protectorate, and in Freetown there is also a considerable Mende community. The diffi culties inherent in any attempt to take a reliable census of a preponderantly illiterate population make it impossible to determine accurately the number of Mende speakers, but various estimates have been made, 1 Little estimated that in 1950 the Mende population as a whole numbered close on a million,- including the Liberian section. There is some evidence that the Ivlende-speaking area is increasing, particularly on the 1. K. Little, The Mende of Sierra Leone, London 1951* _ 2 - coast, where Sherbro Is tending to be replaced by Mende, Mende is widely understood in the non-Mende areas of Sierra leone, especially by the educated elite who have attended Bo School, the largest, and until recently, the only, secondary school for boys in the protectorate. Boys from all parts of the protectorate come to the secondary school in Bo, the unofficial ’capital1 of the protectorate, situated in the heart of the Mende area, where they learn Mende, not as a subject in the school curriculum, but from their social intercourse with Mende speakers both in the school and in the town. 1 Mende is classified by Westermam as a member of the Mande group. It is most closely akin to Loko, one of the minor languages of Sierra Leone, with only 76,000 speakers according to Westermann ; the Loko seem to have been cut off from the main body of the Mende by a wedge of Temne during the tribal warfare of the last century. The Mende have a feeling of kinship with the Loko which is often expressed in terms of an uncle-nephew relationship. Also closely related to Mende are Bandi, Loma and ICpelle, all spoken in Liberia. The etymology of the word ’Mende1 is obscure, 1. L. Westermann and M. Bryan. Handbook of African Languages Pt. II, London 1952, - 3 - but it seems not unlikely that it is cognate with 'Maude*, itself a cognate of 'Mali*, the name of one of the mediaeval negro empires of the Western Sudan. The' language shows a high degree of homogeneity with no extreme dialectal variations. Two main dialects may, however, be distinguished - Kpa Mende, spoken in the western part of the region, and Ko Mende or Upper Mende, spoken in the eastern part* Lexi cally the two dialects differ little; the main difference lies in the consonant mutation system, which is described in detail later; suffice it here to mention as illustrative of the difference between the two dialects thatKpa Mende has the alternanees p/b and t/d, where Upper Mende has p/w, t/1* S'or example s Upper Mende Kpa Mende pelei, house pelei nya welei, my house nya belei paa, kill it paa kalii na waa, kill that snake kalii na baa to mbei, set it down here to mbei na. lo mbei, set that down here na do mbei A further important difference is that medial £ and j. in Kpa Mende correspond to w and y in Upper Mende. - 4 - For example? Upper Mende Kpa Mende hiye, get up hi^je hiya, pound (rice) hija. hiwi, ant hill higi nd ewa, pub e s nd e ga 1 a?he Kpa Mende, with a population estimated at 20 per cent of the total Mende figure,/ are distinguished in. respect not only of dialect, but also of other . cultural features* Most noticeably they preserve a more martial tradition than the rest of the Mende, and still take great pride in the military prowess of their war leaders of the last century; the Wunde secret society, which seems to have been an organization for toughening and training boys for military service, flourishes in the Kpa Mende area but is not found elsewhere. The meaning of the word ' Kpa! is uncertain; two possible interpretations are commonly offered by the Mende themselves; 1) ’ different1 , of. ngi gb a, 111 am different11. (kg/gb mutation) * The Mende are themselves keenly aware of the linguistic and cultural differences betvreen the two sections. 2) 1 hard’ . cf. kpa.u and kpa^kpau, 11 hard, tough" . 1. Ethnographic Survey of Africa. West Africa ft. II London 19oO* - 5 - The Kpa Mende are considered by the others some™ what hard-hearted, more resolute and of a tougher moral fibre. This greater * hardness' of the Kpa Mende seems to be reflected in certain cultural features particular to them notably the Yaunde Society, mentioned above, initiation into which seems even now to demand the endurance of a certain amount of physical discomfort. The Upper Mende dialect has been chosen as the literary dialect, probably because it is the larger of the two main dialects and perhaps also because the Methodist Mission, which has been most active in the production of vernacular literature, operates mostly in that dialect area. The Methodist Mission established a printing press at Bunumbu, in the Upper Mende area, which was subsequently moved to Bo, in the Kpa Mende area, but the dialect originally used is still employed. A few works, notably a translation of 'The Pilgrim's Progress', have been produced in the Kpa Mende dialect by an .American mission, but apart from these, the Kpa dialect is not used for literary purposes. An adult literacy campaign is being conducted and in support of this the Bunumbu Press has maintained a steady production of small booklets ( averagirg about 15 to 20 pages) on such subjects as hygiene, farming, child welfare and first aid; a few' translations have been _ 6 - made of stories like ’Rip Tan Winkle’ and 1Sorab and Rustum1, as well as of several religious stories. These booklets arejt3(" a. predominantly religious or intru™ ctional nature, many being translations from English, and to date there is very little evidence of any original writing in Mende by native speakers; certainly nothing of literary merit has so far been produced. In 1956 a translation of the.-jjew Testament appeared, the first book in Mende with hard covers. The present work is based upon the Upper Mende dialect; the material for it was collected mostly in Segbwema in the Jaluahun Chiefdom, Kailahun District, and in the surrounding villages during a year* s field work in 1952.