Kusaal Grammar Agolle Dialect

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Kusaal Grammar Agolle Dialect Kusaal Grammar Agolle Dialect David Eddyshaw 2020 i Contents Preface...................................................................................................................... iv Abbreviations............................................................................................................. v Sources...................................................................................................................... vi References.............................................................................................................. viii 1 Introduction............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Kusaal and the Kusaasi.......................................................................................1 1.2 Related languages...............................................................................................4 1.3 Grammatical sketch............................................................................................6 2 Sound system...........................................................................................................12 2.1 Consonants........................................................................................................12 2.2 Vowels............................................................................................................... 13 2.3 Syllables and tonemes......................................................................................15 2.4 Standard orthography.......................................................................................18 3 Word structure......................................................................................................... 19 3.1 Word boundaries...............................................................................................19 3.2 Apocope............................................................................................................ 21 3.3 Segmental structure.........................................................................................26 3.3.1 Root allomorphy.........................................................................................27 3.3.2 Morphophonemic rules..............................................................................29 3.4 Tone Patterns....................................................................................................33 3.4.1 Nouns and adjectives.................................................................................34 3.4.2 Verbs.......................................................................................................... 37 3.4.3 Derivation..................................................................................................39 4 External sandhi........................................................................................................ 40 4.1 Prosodic clitics..................................................................................................40 4.2 Liaison............................................................................................................... 42 4.3 M spreading...................................................................................................... 49 4.4 M dropping.......................................................................................................50 4.5 Segmental contact............................................................................................52 5 Noun flexion............................................................................................................. 54 5.1 Noun classes.....................................................................................................54 5.2 Stem levelling...................................................................................................56 5.3 Paradigms......................................................................................................... 57 6 Adjective flexion....................................................................................................... 66 7 Verb flexion.............................................................................................................. 69 ii 8 Stem conversion....................................................................................................... 74 8.1 Verbs from nominals.........................................................................................74 8.2 Nominals from verbs.........................................................................................75 8.2.1 Gerunds......................................................................................................75 8.2.2 Concrete nouns..........................................................................................77 8.3 Nominals from nominals...................................................................................77 9 Derivation by suffixes...............................................................................................79 9.1 Verbs from verbs...............................................................................................79 9.2 Verbs from nominals.........................................................................................82 9.3 Nominals from verbs.........................................................................................83 9.3.1 Agent nouns...............................................................................................83 9.3.2 Adjectives...................................................................................................85 9.3.3 Instrument nouns.......................................................................................87 9.3.4 Gerunds......................................................................................................88 9.3.5 Other derivatives.......................................................................................89 9.4 Nominals from nominals...................................................................................89 10 Noun prefixes......................................................................................................... 91 11 Loanwords.............................................................................................................. 93 12 Noun phrases.........................................................................................................95 12.1 Number........................................................................................................... 98 12.2 Gender............................................................................................................ 99 12.3 Pronouns.......................................................................................................100 12.3.1 Personal.................................................................................................100 12.3.2 Demonstrative........................................................................................102 12.3.3 Indefinite................................................................................................103 12.3.4 Interrogative..........................................................................................104 12.3.5 Personifier..............................................................................................105 12.3.6 Other pronouns......................................................................................106 12.4 Proper names................................................................................................108 12.5 Kinship terms................................................................................................112 12.6 Quantifiers....................................................................................................113 12.6.1 Numbers................................................................................................114 12.7 Predependents..............................................................................................116 12.7.1 Unbound noun phrases..........................................................................117 12.7.1.1 With postpositions...........................................................................120 12.7.2 Combining forms....................................................................................122 12.8 Postdependents.............................................................................................124 12.8.1 Adjectives...............................................................................................125 12.8.2 Lā and ṉwà.............................................................................................128 13 Prepositions......................................................................................................... 130 iii 14 Verb phrases........................................................................................................ 132 14.1 Aspect...........................................................................................................133 14.2 Tense............................................................................................................. 138 14.2.1 Discontinuous past.................................................................................139 14.2.2 Periphrastic futures...............................................................................139 14.2.3 Implicit tense and narrative...................................................................140
Recommended publications
  • What's in an Agent?
    Morphology https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-020-09366-2 What’s in an agent? A distributional semantics approach to agent nouns in French Richard Huyghe1 Marine Wauquier2 · ©TheAuthor(s)2020 Abstract This article investigates the morphological diversity of agent nouns (ANs) in French. It addresses the questions of which nouns form a semantically coherent class of ANs, what their morphological properties are, and whether these properties correlate with agentive subtypes. To deal with these issues, a distributional semantics approach is adopted. The investigation is based on the distributional study of monose- mous deverbal ANs ending in -eur,andontheexaminationofwordsimilaritiesinthe French Wikipedia corpus. It is shown that French ANs as a homogeneous distribu- tional class display a large variety of morphological profiles. ANs can be affixed, converted, compound nouns, as well as opaque and morphologically simple nouns. Agentive affixes are diverse and correlated to the selection of bases from different lexical categories and semantic types. It appears that agent meaning in the nominal domain is not necessarily imported from the verbal domain, but can develop directly in the semantic structure of nouns. In addition, a distinction between functional, oc- casional and behavioral ANs, depending on whether they denote agents with an oc- cupational status, agents in a particular event, or agents with a tendency to act in a certain way, is proven to be distributionally relevant. This distinction applies to all ANs, possibly in correlation with specificities as regards morphological type, base and affix selection. The study illustrates that with a careful processing of linguistic data, distributional semantics can help answering basic research questions and sup- port fine-grained theoretical distinctions.
    [Show full text]
  • Give the Noun Form of Perform
    Give The Noun Form Of Perform Fleeing Marwin voicings harrowingly or prorate Tuesdays when Goose is unreflected. Tanner still throwshustled foamingly intolerably after while Godart private disturb Tray ransomsnubbingly, that suppliers.quite impressionistic. Papery Skyler transmigrates no Gagarin This wonder friends in form, give the noun form of perform Kindence Answer is noun refers to a person group thing having an emotion process its state of being The given word 'kind' is an adjective and's noun country is '. Form body not conjugated and your not cross anything so who is performing an. Adjectives and noun modifiers in English article Article. For all questions the object nouns in the construction sentence then be replaced by the. Use building in front of a spade of any share when someone want toward convey specificity. First French Course. Define all The top objective of organizations in giving rewards is to. Principle meaning One little Kitchen. Performing Definition of Performing by Merriam-Webster. How is a short sentences, as i have nouns should, not amount of noun form the of perform at an admirable distinction of? Let my broad-shouldered verbs and nouns do the hard as of description. Will give more young learners practice changing nouns to pronouns. Assuming you comfort knowledge around a nun rather leave in reference to wrong person. Infinitives examples Flaviano Zerbetto. Words can light fires in the minds of men com jot Meaning in Somali what is. Quran 1145 Arabic verbal noun of akuma form I wisdom. What nouns or not covet repeated makes so ill scholarship and common, if he attacht to in some particular type of words usually thought to noun form? To ensure all transmit the unwanted energies are infinite it is best you perform this.
    [Show full text]
  • Polysemous Agent Nominals in Kambaata (Cushitic)*
    Author manuscript, published in "Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 64, 4 (2011) 369-381" Published 2011in: Luschützky, Hans-Christian & Franz Rainer (eds.) 2011. Agent-noun polysemy in a cross-linguistic perspective. Special issue of Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 64, 4: 369-381 [This is a pre-publication version. Please quote the final published version.] YVONNE TREIS (La Trobe University) Polysemous Agent Nominals in Kambaata (Cushitic)* Kambaata has a morpheme -aan with which agent nominals can be derived from verbs and nouns. The present article discusses, firstly, the morphological and syntactic characteristics of -aan nominals and the specific problem of which word class they should be assigned to. Secondly, it is shown that the -aan morpheme is multifunctional. Apart from agent nominals, it is used to derive instrument, place and patient nominals. 1. Introduction Kambaata belongs to the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language phylum, more precisely to the Highland East Cushitic (HEC) language group. The hitherto little documented language is spoken by more than 600,000 speakers in an area approximately 300 km south-west of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. The lan- guage has a robust noun-verb distinction and a (sub-)word class of adjectives.1 Kambaata is strictly suffixing and has a rich verbal and nominal morphology. One of its derivational morphemes, the agentive morpheme -aan, productively gener- ates agent nominals on the basis of verbs. In the present article, the formal features (section 2) as well as the meaning and use of -aan nominals (section 3) are dis- cussed. In a language without a documented history, agent nominals can only be analysed in a synchronic perspective.2 The present work is intended to supplement the vast literature on agentive derivations that is predominantly concerned with Indo-European languages.
    [Show full text]
  • Agent Nouns in the Language of Caxton's Edition of Le Morte Darthur
    Agent nouns in the language of Caxton’s edition of Le Morte Darthur An analysis of the distribution and morphosemantic structure of agent nouns in William Caxton’s edition of Malory’s Le Morte Darthur Anders Olderkjær Samland Master’s Thesis in English Linguistics Department of Foreign Languages University of Bergen May 2019 Abstract in Norwegian I denne masteroppgåva vart agent nouns, agentative substantiv, i språket til William Caxton si utgåve av Le Morte Darthur undersøkt. Eit agentativt substantiv er ein ordformasjon som uttrykker utføraren av verbet i basen. Dei er typisk forma av ein verbal base + ein agentativ suffiks, for eksempel ein baker (bake + er) er ‘ein som baker’. Ein agent er ein semantisk kategori som er kjenneteikna av at kategori-medlemmane uttrykk visse agentive properties. Studien har undersøkt denne typen ordformasjon i Le Morte Darthur, som representerer språket i språkperioden late Middle English. Dei to overordna forskingsspørsmåla spør på den eine sida om desse formasjonane i forhold til kva som kjenneteiknar distribusjonen av dei i teksten, i forhold til etymologi både av leksema og suffiksa. På den andre sida kva som kjenneteiknar deira morfosemantiske oppbygging i forhold til uttrykking av agentive properties mellom agent substantiv, base, og om det er noko skilnad der mellom suffiksa. For å undersøke agent substantiva vart teksten manuelt lest gjennom og relevante leksem henta ut, medan relevante suffiks i teksten vart søkt etter ved hjelp av programmet AntConc, for å forsikre at alle relevante formasjonar vart inkludert i korpuset. For informasjon om dei enkelte leksem i forhold til etymologi vart Oxford English Dictionary og Middle English Dictionary brukt.
    [Show full text]
  • Agent Nouns, Productivity and Diachrony: an Analysis of [VN/A]N/A Compounds and -Eur Derivations in French
    Agent Nouns, Productivity and Diachrony: An Analysis of [VN/A]N/A Compounds and -eur Derivations in French Maria Rosenberg Department of French, Italian and Classical Languages, Stockholm University [email protected] Abstract This study addresses the semantic structure of two types of French agent nouns, [VN/A]N/A compounds (porte-drapeau) and -eur derivations (porteur) from a diachronic perspective. The focus is on established words listed in the TLFi. The main objective is to question Dressler’s (1986) hierarchy of Agent: Human Agent > Animal Agent > Plant > Impersonal Agent > Instrument > Locative, which proposes that meaning extension diachronically follows this direction. My previous research results show that, synchronically, the Instrument is the most productive/profitable meaning for the [VN/A]N/A formation. The diachronic results of this study likewise fail to confirm the hierarchy. In particular, the semantic structure of the [VN/A]N/A violates the direction implied by the hierarchy. Hence, I reach the conclusion that the different meanings in the polysemy of Agent can be more or less central for different types of agent formations, i.e. both derivations and compounds; the Agent is not necessarily always the primary meaning from which all others originate. This hypothesis will be further examined in future studies that take into account other agentive formations in French and contrast them with similar formations in Swedish. 1. Introduction The objective is to examine the semantic structure in diachrony of French [VN/A]N/A compounds and -eur derivations. These two productive formation types principally give rise to Agents such as brise-cœur (‘heartbreaker’) and Instruments such as tâteur (‘false key’).
    [Show full text]
  • A Comparative Study of Morphologically Constructed Agent Nouns in French and Yoruba
    A Comparative Study... A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MORPHOLOGICALLY CONSTRUCTED AGENT NOUNS IN FRENCH AND YORUBA Tuesday S. Owoeye Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria Summary: It is widely believed that a very large number of word forms in many languages are traceable to the outputs of morphological processes which broadly include affixation, compounding and reduplication. In this paper, we carry out a comparative analysis of agent noun formation rules in French and in Yoruba using Lexeme-Base Morphology model. Our findings show that while French employs suffixation and compounding, Yoruba makes use of prefixation and reduplication. The study also reveals that both languages demonstrate similar phonological, syntactic and semantic traits re- lating to the agent noun production. 1. Introduction The nature of a morphologically formed agent noun has generated theoretical arguments among derivational morphologists. While some argue that only hu- mans can stand as agents, some others believe that both humans and objects have agentive properties as far as morphology is concerned. For instance, Fill- more [1968: 24] posits that agentive formation has to do with «the case of the typically animate perceived instigator of the action identified in the verb». Ac- cording to this view, while French words such as investigateur ‘investigator’ and boxeur ‘boxer’ are agent nouns, words like brûleur ‘burner’ and adoucis- sant ‘softener’ are mere instrument nouns because they do not refer to human beings but to inanimate objects. On the ground of this argument, while the Yoruba awakọ̀ ‘driver’ and apeja ‘fisherman’ are agent nouns, abẹ ‘razor’ and agbégilódò ‘timber carrier’ will be considered as mere instrument nouns.
    [Show full text]
  • Word Classes in Egyptian, Semitic and Cushitic (Afroasiatic) Elsa Oréal, Martine Vanhove
    Word classes in Egyptian, Semitic and Cushitic (Afroasiatic) Elsa Oréal, Martine Vanhove To cite this version: Elsa Oréal, Martine Vanhove. Word classes in Egyptian, Semitic and Cushitic (Afroasiatic). Oxford Handbook of Word Classes, In press. hal-03033191 HAL Id: hal-03033191 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03033191 Submitted on 1 Dec 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 27. Word classes in Egyptian, Semitic and Cushitic (Afroasiatic) Elsa Oréal and Martine Vanhove 27.1 Introduction Today, the exact number of living Afroasiatic languages is still disputed, with upwards of 375 languages, though the actual number may be less (for a discussion, see Frajzyngier and Shay (2012: 1). The number of speakers is probably around 300,000,000. The languages are spoken in Northern and Central Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Near and Middle East, and Central Asia (Arabic only). Afroasiatic (AA) is the phylum with the longest written record: Over five millennia. Thus, it provides linguists with a wealth of documentation that, among other things, shows the fluidity of some word categories on a long-term scale. Nevertheless, this exceptional time-depth only applies to three of the six Afroasiatic families.
    [Show full text]
  • Etoc生徒様以外使用禁止 Compound Nouns
    Lesson4:Agent Noun An agent noun is a being or a thing that acts for, or in place of another, one that acts on authority, or one that does. The suffixes used are: _er as in adviser, player, transformer, receiver _or as in donor, collector, operator, inventor, orator _ist as in pianist, guitarist, specialist, scientist Recipient Noun A recipient noun indicates on that receives something. One to whom an act is done, or upon, whom a privilege is conferred or given. The suffix used is ee as in payee, grantee, and vendee. Compound Nouns eTOC生徒様以外使用禁止 Compound Nouns A compound noun is made up of two or more parts of which may be used as a separate word but felt to be a single term. The elements composing compound noun maybe almost any part of speech. Noun + noun ____ schoolground, classroom, roommate Adjective + noun _____ quicksilver, greenhouse Adjective + verb ______ whitewash, housefly Verb + noun _______ pickpocket, jumpsuit Adverb + verb _______ overload, understand Gerund + noun _______ looking-glass, hearing-aide Exercise 7 Combine the word under Column A with a word under Column B to form a compound noun. Column A Column B Compound Noun House shore housewife Back brow eyebrow Head bone backbone Eye wife seashore SeaeTOC生徒様以外使用禁止ache headache The written of compound nouns is somewhat arbitrary. Sometimes they are written as one word as, blackboard, housewife, blackbird. Sometimes they are written as two words joined by a hyphen; as fire-engine, ice-cream, Atty. At-law, son-in-law. Or even occasionally as two words; as, post office, police station, railway station.
    [Show full text]
  • Acquisition System for Arabic Noun Morphology
    Acquisition System for Arabic Noun Morphology Saleem Abuleil Khalid Alsamara Martha Evens Information System Department Computer Science Department Chicago State University Illinois Institute of Technology 9501 S. King Drive, Chicago, IL 60628 10 West 31 Street, Chicago IL 60616 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] all the roots in the file. Al-Shalabi reduced the Abstract processing, but he discussed this from point of view of verbs not nouns. Anne Roeck and Many papers have discussed different Waleed Al-Fares (2000) developed a clustering aspects of Arabic verb morphology. Some of algorithm for Arabic words sharing the same them used patterns; others used patterns and verbal root. They used root-based clusters to affixes. But very few have discussed Arabic substitute for dictionaries in indexing for noun morphology particularly for nouns that information retrieval. Beesley and Karttunen are not derived from verbs. In this paper we (2000) described a new technique for describe a learning system that can analyze constructing finite-state transducers that Arabic nouns to produce their involves reapplying a regular-expression morphological information and their compiler to its own output. They implemented paradigms with respect to both gender and the system in an algorithm called compile- number using a rule base that uses suffix replace. This technique has proved useful for analysis as well as pattern analysis. The handling non-concatenate phenomena, and they system utilizes user-feedback to classify the demonstrate it on Malay full-stem reduplication noun and identify the group that it belongs and Arabic stem inter-digitations. to. Most verbs in the Arabic language follow clear rules that define their morphology 1 Introduction and generate their paradigms.
    [Show full text]
  • Reconstructing the Medio-Passive Participle Ofproto-Indo-European
    Reconstructing the medio-passive participle ofProto-Indo-European Jesse Storbeck Advisor: Jay Fisher Contents Acknowledgments iii I. Introduction tothe PIE Medio-Passive Participle 1 II. The Laryngeal Hypothesis 9 III. *-mn-/*-men-f*-mon- Alternation 19 IV. The Indo-Iranian Athematic Participle in -iina- 26 V. Balto-Slavic "<mo-, *-men- in the Bigger Picture, and Conclusions on the 33 Medio-Passive Participle References 41 ii Acknowledgments Although this essay bears my name officially, such an effort would have been altogether impossible without the help of a number of talented people, to whom I owe an immense gratitude. I would like to thank Claire Bowern and Larry Horn, as well as my fellow linguistics majors from the class of 2011, who provided me with useful feedback over the course of this past academic year. Additionally, I am grateful to Stanley Insler, who originally suggested this topic to me, and whose expert knowledge and critique I am fortunate to have received. Most of all, my advisor Jay Fisher deserves credit for any scholarly contribution this essay may make. His guidance and support have been crucial throughout every step of the thesis process, and although this essay could be the last academic writing I ever do, the enthusiasm, dedication, and effortwhich Jay brought to the project were beyond the requirements of an undergraduate advisor. He is responsible for the majority of what I know about Indo-European linguistics and is one of the teachers who have truly shaped my education. Finally, I would like to thank all those who ever instructed me in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, or linguistics.
    [Show full text]
  • Collective and Feminine in Tocharian. In: Multilingualism and History of Knowledge
    Olav Hackstein 2011/2012: Collective and Feminine in Tocharian. In: Multilingualism and History of Knowledge. Vol. II: Linguistic Developments along the Silk Road. Archaism and Innovation in Tocharian. Edited by Olav Hackstein and Ronald I. Kim. Wien. 143-177. (= Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse Sitzungsberichte, 834. Band.). * COLLECTIVE AND FEMININE IN TOCHARIAN 1.1.1. The morphological markers of the Indo-European feminine gender arose from a word-formation suffix with collective meaning *-h2 and various derivatives formed with it, including thematic *-e-h2 and athematic * -i-h2. This insight goes back to Johannes SCHMIDT and was later substantiated in many ways by advances in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European nominal morphology, most notably NUSSBAUM 1986 and HARÐARSON 1987a, b. The origin of the collective morpheme *-h2 is hinted at by a wealth of traces of the pre-inflectional, purely word-formational use of *-h2, which survive into the individual Indo-European lan- guages. The evidence includes the placement of *-h2- before derivational suffixes in complex formations and before inflectional endings, which accords with the usual behavior of derivational morphemes, cf. e.g. w w PIE * k e-h2-nt-o- > Lat. quantus; PIE * te-h2-nt-o- > Lat. tantus; PIE * k i-h2 ⇒ w *k i-h2-ent - > Skt. kíyant- (SIMS -WILLIAMS 1997: 318); PIE * ker-h2 ⇒ * ker-h2-s- ⇒ * ker-h2-s-ro- ⇒ * ker-h2-s-re-h2 > Lat. cerebra ‘brains’ (for the semantics cf. Germ. Gehirn ); PIE * dru-h2 ‘wood’ ⇒ singulative * dru-h2-s ‘single tree’ > Gk. δρKL 28ALLES 200.a: .A, NIKOLAEV 2010a: 192E on the derivation of singulative formations cf.
    [Show full text]
  • Nominal Verbs and Transitive Nouns: Vindicating Lexicalism*
    Nominal Verbs and Transitive Nouns: Vindicating Lexicalism* Paul Kiparsky Stanford University 1 Nominalizations The earliest generative work derived all nominalizations syntactically (Chomsky 1955-6, Lees 1960). Chomsky (1970) then argued that only -ing gerunds are derived syntactically, while all other types of event nominals, such as refutation, acceptance, refusal, are derived morphologically in the lexicon from bases that are unspecified between nouns and verbs. The suffix -ing was shown to serve both as the gerund formative and as one of the formatives that derive lexical event nominals. Chomsky’s main argument was based on the fact that gerund phrases have the structure of verb phrases whereas other event nominals have the structure of noun phrases.1 The differences are completely systematic. Unlike derived event nominals, gerunds are modifiable by adverbs, assign structural case to their complements (1a,b), disallow articles and other determiners (1c) and plurals (1d), allow aspect (1e) and negation (1f), and they have a grammatical subject which is assigned a Th-role as in finite clauses (1g), and which may be an expletive (1h): (1) Gerunds (-ingV) Nominals(-ingN, -ion, -al, -ance... ) a. Adjectives *herquicksigningthedocument herquicksigning of the document b. Adverbs her immediately reciting it *her immediately recital of it c. Determiners *the/a/this/each performing it the/a/this/each performance of it d. Plural *herreadingsit/*herreadingits herreadingsofit e. Aspect byherhavingsungit *byherhavingsungofit f. Negation byhernotapprovingit *byhernotapprovalofit g. Subject we remembered her reading it we remembered her reading of it h. Expletives it(s)seemingtomethatIexist2 *it(s) appearance to me that I exist *I am grateful to Vera Gribanova and to an anonymous reviewer for their very helpful comments and queries.
    [Show full text]