The Structure of the Noun Phrase in Viri

DigitalResources Electronic Working Paper 2020-002

Clement Mur'bá Wáũ

The Structure of the Noun Phrase in Viri

Clement Mur'bá Wáũ

SIL International® 2020

Data and materials collected by researchers in an era before documentation of permission was standardized may be included in this publication. SIL makes diligent efforts to identify and acknowledge sources and to obtain appropriate permissions wherever possible, acting in good faith and on the best information available at the time of publication.

Abstract

This study describes and analyses the structure of the noun phrase in Viri. Viri is an Eastern Ubangi language of the Niger-Congo family which is spoken in Southern Sudan. It is an SVO language. Most SVO languages follow one of two patterns in the noun phrase structure: they are either adjective- noun as in English or noun-adjective. Viri, however, has modifiers on both sides of the noun in the noun phrase. This thesis will examine the syntactic relationship of all the constituents in relation to nouns that they describe in the structure of the noun phrase since there has been no prior study carried out on this topic. There are six chapters in this study. Chapter one presents a general introduction. Chapter two contains a literature review, divided into sub-topics. Chapter three presents a phonological overview of Viri. The overview provides a description of phonetic consonants and vowels as well as the phonemic and orthographic representation in the language. Chapter four is a descriptive analysis of the prenominal modifiers in noun phrases, including noun-noun possessive and appositive noun phrases. This is the core of this investigation. Chapter five is concerned with the postnominal noun phrase. Chapter six presents a general summary and conclusions. In addition, some suggestions are provided for further research. ﻣﺴﺘﺨﻠﺺ اﻟﺒﺤﺚ ﺗﮭﺪف ھﺬه اﻟﺪراﺳﺔ اﻟﻰ وﺻﻒ وﺗﺤﻠﯿﻞ اﻟﺠﻤﻠﺔ اﻻﺳﻤﯿﺔ ﻓﻰ ﻟﻐﺔ اﻟﻔﯿﺮى وﺗﻌﺘﺒﺮ ھﺬه اﻟﻠﻐﺔ ﻣﻦ ﻣﺠﻤﻮﻋﺔ ﻟﻐﺎت اﻻﺑﺎﻧﺠﻰ اﻟﺸﺮﻗﯿﺔ واﻟﺘﻰ ﺗﻨﺘﻤﻨﻰ ﺑﺪورھﺎ اﻟﻰ ﻋﺎﺋﻠﺔ ﻟﻐﺎت اﻟﻨﯿﺠﺮ اﻟﻜﻨﻐﻮ اﻟﺘﻰ ﺗﻮﺟﺪ ﻓﻰ ﺟﻨﻮب اﻟﺴﻮدان.ھﻰ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻠﻐﺎت اﻟﺘﻰ ﺗﺘﺮﻛﺐ ﻓﯿﮭﺎ اﻟﺠﻤﻠﺔ ﺣﺴﺐ ﻧﻤﻂ SVO واﻟﺬى ﯾﺎﺧﺬ اﺣﺪ اﻟﺸﻜﻠﯿﻦ ﻟﻠﺼﻔﮫ ﯾﺘﺒﻌﮭﺎ اﻻﺳﻢ ﻛﻤﺎ ﻓﻰ اﻟﻠﻐﺔ اﻻﻧﺠﻠﯿﺰﯾﺔ او اﺳﻢ ﺗﺘﺒﻌﮫ ﺻﻔﮫ.وﺗﺘﻤﯿﺰ ﻟﻐﺔ اﻟﻔﯿﺮى ﺑﺎن اﻟﺠﻤﻠﺔ اﻻﺳﻤﯿﺔ ﻓﯿﮭﺎ ﺳﺒﻖ وﺗﺒﻊ ﺑﺎدوات اﻟﺘﻌﺮﯾﻒ ﻓﺎﻻرﻗﺎم اﻟﺘﺮﺗﺒﯿﺔ .ﺗﺤﺘﻮى اﻟﺪراﺳﺔ ﻋﻠﻰ ﺳﺖ ﻓﺼﻮل ﺣﯿﺚ ﺗﺤﺪﺛﻨﺎ ﻓﻰ اﻟﻔﺼﻞ اﻻول ﻋﻦ ﻣﻘﺪﻣﺔ اﻟﺒﺤﺚ ، اﻟﻔﺼﻞ اﻟﺜﺎﻧﻰ ﯾﺤﺘﻮى ﻋﻠﻰ ﻣﺮاﺟﻌﺔ اﻻدﺑﯿﺔ اﻟﺘﻰ ﺗﻨﻘﺴﻢ اﻟﻰ ﻧﻘﺎط ﻓﺮﻋﯿﺔ .اﻣﺎ اﻟﻔﺼﻞ اﻟﺜﺎﻟﺚ ﻓﻘﺪ ﻋﯿﻦ ﻟﻌﺮض اﻟﺴﻤﺎت اﻟﺼﻮﺗﯿﺔ ﻟﻠﻐﺔ اﻟﻔﯿﺮى (وﺻﻒ اﻟﺼﻮاﻣﺖ واﻟﺼﻮاﺋﺖ).وﻓﻰ اﻟﻔﺼﻠﯿﻦ اﻟﺮاﺑﻊ واﻟﺨﺎﻣﺲ ﻗﻤﻨﺎ ﺑﺎﺟﺮاء ﺗﺤﻠﯿﻞ وﺻﻔﻰ ﻟﻠﺠﻤﻠﺔ اﻻﺳﻤﯿﺔ ﻟﻐﺔ اﻟﻔﯿﺮى ، اﻣﺎ اﻟﻔﺼﻞ اﻟﺴﺎدس ﻓﻘﺪ ﺧﺼﺼﻨﺎ ﻟﻤﺨﻠﺺ اﻟﺒﺤﺚ وﺧﺎﺗﻤﺘﮫ و وﺗﻮﺻﯿﺎﺗﮫ.

Contents

List of Maps List of Tables Abbreviations Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Background of the study 1.1.1 Language classification 1.1.2 History of the language 1.1.3 History of the Viri people 1.2 The statement, aims and limitations of the study 1.2.1 The statement of the problem 1.2.2 Aims of the study 1.2.3 Limitations of the study 1.3 Importance of the study 1.4 Methodology of the study 1.5 Structure of the research Chapter 2 Literature Review 2.1 Theoretical background 2.1.1 Word classes and their functions in noun phrases 2.1.2 Phrase structure 2.1.3 Types of phrases 2.1.4 Word order in the syntax of noun phrase 2.2 Relative clause 2.3 Other related languages Chapter 3 Phonological Overview of the Viri Language 3.0 Introduction 3.1 Consonants 3.1.1 Minimal pairs or consonant contrasts 3.1.2 Consonant phonemes inventory 3.1.3 Orthographic equivalents for consonants 3.2 Vowels 3.2.1 Vowel inventory 3.2.2 Advanced tongue root [ATR] 3.2.3 Orthographic equivalents for vowels 3.3 Tone system 3.4 Syllable structures 3.5 Conclusion Chapter 4 Prenominal Modifiers in Viri 4.0 Introduction 4.1 Plurals 4.1.1 The plural of nouns 4.1.2 The plural of adjectives 4.1.3 Reduplication of the plural adjectives 4.1.4 Plural markers in the noun phrase 4.2 Descriptive Adjectives 4.2.1 Adjectives of quality 4.2.2 Adjectives of size 4.2.3 Adjectives of shape 4.2.4 Adjectives of property 4.2.5 Adjectives of sensation 4.2.6 Adjectives of speed 4.2.7 Adjectives of age 4.2.8 Adjectives of colour 4.3 Prenominal determiners 4.3.1 Number determiners 4.3.2 Indefinite quantifier determiners

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4.4 Appositional noun phrase 4.5 Summary Chapter 5 Postnominal Modifiers in Viri 5.0 Introduction 5.1 Possessive pronouns 5.1.1 Inalienable possession 5.1.2 Alienable possession 5.2 Demonstrative adjectives 5.2.1 Free demonstrative adjectives 5.2.2 Bound or referential demonstrative adjectives 5.3 Referential noun phrases 5.4 Postnominal quantifiers and numbers 5.5 Interrogative determiners 5.6 Relative clauses 5.7 Prepositional phrases 5.8 Coordinate noun phrase Chapter 6 Conclusion and Suggestions 6.1 Conclusion 6.2 Suggestions Appendix A: Additional Literature in Belanda Viri Appendix B: List of Words from Text Material Appendix C: Topical Word List References

List of Maps

Map 1 Countries where Adamawa-Ubangian languages are spoken Map 2 The location of Western Bahr El Ghazal State and Western Equatoria State in Southern Sudan Map 3 Locations where Viri is spoken

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Classification of Ubangi languages Table 1.2 Grimes (1992) classification Table 3.1 The Phonetic Consonants in Viri Table 3.2 Consonant Minimal Pair Contrasts Table 3.3 Consonant Phonemes of Viri Table 3.4 Orthographic Symbols Used for Consonants in Viri Table 3.5 Phonetic Vowel Inventory Table 3.6 Set A and Set B of Vowels Table 3.7 The Orthographic Symbols Used for Vowels Table 3.8 The Orthographic Symbols Used for Tones Table 4.1 Prenominal Noun phrase structures Table 5.1 Independent Pronouns Table 5.2 Possessive Pronoun Possessor Table 5.3 Inalienable Possessed-Possessor Genitive Relationship Table 5.4 Combinations of Particles and Pronouns Table 5.5 Concept of Emphasis on Possessor Table 5.6 The Coordinated Noun Phrase Table 5.7 Postnominal Modifiers in the Noun Phrase

Abbreviations

Abbreviation Meaning Abbreviation Meaning

1 First person LOC Locative/Location 2 Second person M Mid tone/Modifier 3 Third person M-N Modifier-Noun ADJ Adjective N Noun AP Adjective phrase NEG Negative ATR Advanced tongue root N-Gen Noun-Genitive AUX Auxiliary N-N Noun-noun BENEF Benefective N.HEAD Head noun COMP Comparative NP Noun phrase COMPL Complement NUM Number COORD Coordinate P Preposition COORD.NP Coordinate noun phrase PART Particle/Partitive DEF Definite PRF Perfect DEF.ART Definite article PL Plural DEG Degree PP Prepositional Phrase DEM Demonstrative PCoordNP Prepositional coordinate noun phrase DET Determiner PRON Pronoun DIST Distinctive PRONOM Pronominal DO Direct object PROP Proper EXCL Exclusive PSR Possessor FOC Focus PSD Possessed GEN Genitive QM Question marker GEN.N Genitive noun QUAL Quality H High tone QUAN Quantifer IDO Indirect object REF Reflexive IMP Imperative REL Relative INCL Inclusive SG Singular INDF Indefinite SPEC Specifier INDF.ART Indefinite article SBJ Subject L Low tone/Liquid SVO Subject Verb Object

Chapter 1 Introduction

Language is a body of structured sounds produced by humans for communicating with each other. From a communicative point of view, all normal humans use language to talk about the things and events that surround them. De Villiers and de Villiers (1978:173) have viewed language to be universally unique in two respects: it is “unique as a form of behaviour and unique to man.” These language experts consider language to consist of special properties. According to them, these properties have led many scholars to propose that the capacity for language must be innate in humans. This innateness is then genetically transmitted to their offspring, which enables them to acquire language. Language is a system of symbols that stand for real-life referents. In studying language, Payne (1997:5–6) asserts that the link between symbol and signified item is usually intentional. In order to make this statement clear, he says, “The language user intends to establish the representational bond between form and meaning. And it follows that the forms used to represent concepts will be structured so as to make the link obvious.” Nasr (1980:1) also argues that language is basically oral and the oral symbols represent meaning because they are normally related to real-life situations and to our experiences. Language is a part of culture and a part of human behaviour. Nasr (1980:1) defines language as “an acquired vocal system for communicating information,” that is, language is a vocal system that can be acquired. Thus, language has a social function and without society it would not exist. Brown (1973, as cited in de Villiers and de Villiers 1978:173) mentions that language has characteristics that provide the means of transmitting the culture. Gleason (1965:4) presents a fruitful argument on the complexity of language patterns. According to him, language has an intricate system of patterns that controls the form of words, sentences and the whole discourse. Language variation can occur at any of the traditional levels of linguistic analysis. Such linguistic areas may include: phonetics, phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax and discourse (Payne 1997:19). Bloomfield (1933:5) argues that Greeks studied only their language. They discovered the parts of speech of their language, its syntactic constructions such as subject and predicate and other inflectional categories. The terms used in linguistics are derived from the Greek terms and are still used today. Many scholars have written general grammars. These grammars are meant to demonstrate that the structure of various languages embodies the valid and logical rules of language universals. Bloomfield continues by claiming that “scholars in many countries began to take great interest in the study of the languages of their time. The era of exploration brought back the superficial knowledge of many languages. Travellers and missionaries brought vocabularies and translated religious books into the languages of the newly discovered countries” (1935:7). Linguists depend on principles and theories to study language. This analysis follows the principles of structural linguistics, which is the scientific study of a structured system of formal linguistic units. There are three major levels of organization for these units: phonology, grammar and semantics. Phonology is the scientific study of sounds in a language. The study of grammar includes the study of syntax (rules which combine words into phrases, clauses and sentences) and morphology (word structure). Semantics is the study of meaning. The present study is concerned with the rules that govern the combination of words into noun phrases. Thus a “noun phrase” can be defined as a structure in which the noun serves as the head that is surrounded by the optional modifiers which describe it. These modifiers may come before the noun or may follow it. According to Baker (1978) and L. Thomas (1993), modifiers that come before the noun are called “prenominal modifiers.” Those that come after the noun are called “postnominal modifiers.” This study is an attempt to describe the structure of noun phrases in Viri. The application will be a mere description and investigation of the order of occurrence, the status of occurrence and the co- occurrence of the elements. This area of study has been chosen as a starting point in the study of Viri because of the presence of some interesting problems that demand study.

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1.1 Background of the study

Viri is an Eastern Ubangian language. It belongs to the Adamawa-Ubangian languages, a part of the Niger-Congo language family. According to Williamson and Blench (2000:27), the Adamawa- Ubangian languages are spoken in some parts of eight African countries. These eight countries include: Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Democratic Republic of Congo, Central Africa Republic, and Southern Sudan. These countries are shown on the map with numbers written in each country.

Map 1.Countries where Adamawa-Ubangian languages are spoken

Map 2. The location of Western Bahr El Ghazal State and Western Equatoria State in Sudan

Viri is spoken in both Western Bahr el Ghazal State and Western Equatoria State of Southern Sudan. In Western Bahr El Ghazal State, it is spoken in Wau town, and areas in the south-west direction of the town. Other places within Western Bahr El Ghazal State are the villages along the Wau-Bo road and Deim Zubeir along the Wau Raja road. In Western Equatoria State, it is spoken in Tambura and the surrounding villages. These villages include the following: Bakiri, to the South West of Tambura, Nagero, Duma to the north of Tambura town, and the area between Iba and Sue rivers near Yambio. Those areas or villages are shown on map 3.

Map 3. Locations in Southern Sudan where Viri is spoken

Key ° where Viri is spoken • where other languages are spoken Source: Map used with permission by Lynn Frank, adapted from Wikimapia, https://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=7.645665&lon=30.992432&z=7&m=w, CC BY-SA; with data from 2016 OCHA Western Ecuatoria State map, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/ss_0030_we_state_a4_12122016.pdf, CC BY-SA, and Western Bahr El Ghazel State map, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/ReferenceMap_WesternBahrelGhazalState_A4 _March2012.pdf, CC BY-SA. Accessed June 24, 2020.

1.1.1 Language classification

The classification of the Ubangian languages was first made by Delafosse in 1924 (Williamson and Blench 2000:27). He was the first scholar to use the word “Ubangi” for the eastern part of the language family. According to Williamson and Blench (2000:27), Greenberg (1963) classified the Adamawa- Ubangi languages as part of Niger-Congo under the name Adamawa-Eastern. He divided Adamawa languages into fourteen numbered groups and Eastern languages into eight numbered groups. Furthermore, on the advice of J. Thomas, Samarin (1971) reclassified the Eastern languages as languages of the Ubangi subbranch. This reclassification was based on the fact that those languages present a more compact lexicostatistical picture than Adamawa (Boyd 1989:190). According to Boyd (1989:190), Greenberg (1963) classified the Gbaya Group, under Ubangi, a subbranch of Adamawa-Ubangi of Niger-Congo. But the Sudanese Gbaya, known as Kresh in the Southwest part of Southern Sudan, is classified as a Nilo-Saharan language (Bender 2000:45). Since the two Gbaya are classified under different language families, this shows that they are not the same language. Table 1.1 represents a synthesis of Boyd's (1989) and Kleinewillinghöfer's (1996) classification of some Ubangian languages, as cited in Williamson and Blench (2000:28).

Table 1.1 Synthesis of Boyd’s and Kleinewillinghöfer's classification of Ubangi languages

Ubangi

Zande Gbaya (4) Mba Ngbaka Sere Ngbandi Banda (1) (8) (5) (3) (2)

The next table represents a classification that includes Viri, as cited in the Ethnologue (Grimes 1992:388)1. In this work, the position of Viri is clearly shown in relation to sister languages of the sub-section of Ubangi.

1.1.2 History of the language

During the Rajaf Conference of 1928, Viri was considered to be close to Ndogo because of their great lexical affinity (Santandrea 1961, cited in Tucker and Bryan 1966). Because of this linguistic affinity, Ndogo was chosen by the missionaries as a vehicle of literacy and was used for primary education during the colonial period (Bendor-Samuel 1989:195). Therefore, Viri children were taught to recite religious knowledge in Ndogo before entering primary school. After baptism, the children had to learn to speak and write in Ndogo. Obviously, speaking in Ndogo became a common practice among Viri teachers and their pupils, even if there were no Ndogo people around. For this reason, the Ndogo language became the most popular language in Western Bahr El Ghazal. In 1958, the government took over the schools from the missionaries and the use of Ndogo started to decrease among Viri and other tribes. Arabic was then introduced instead of Ndogo. The use of Arabic began to gain ground and that trend continues up to this present time. During the time of local autonomy for the South, the regional government decided to train some people at the Maridi Teachers Training Institute. The purpose of this training was to educate teachers on how to develop the indigenous languages of the South. In the course of this training, some linguistic investigation was made, which led to the provision of a tentative orthography for writing Viri. Using this orthography, some materials for a Viri literacy programme were published within the Institute. Some of these materials are now in use in literacy classes. Since the study of the language is always in progress, linguistic research also continues in the form of this present study.

1 Editor’s note: For the current version of this table, see www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/bai-viri.

1.1.3 History of the Viri people

Viri is said to have come from the South-West. According to Evans-Pritchard (1931), the Zande successfully invaded the Viri tribe on the banks of the Mbili, Boku, Kere and Mbomu rivers at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Instructions to invade them were issued by Nunga, the chief of Tambura and the Ubangi-Shari Province of French Equatorial Africa. As a result, the conquered tribe was pushed northwards. They were forced to settle on the banks of Namgbonguru, Ngoya, and Mbage, the three tributaries of Sue river. Some of the Viri resided on the bank of Sue to the West and occupied all the areas up to Tambura Post. According to Evans-Pritchard (1931), a second invasion was under the leadership of Tambura, another chief. This time the Zande imposed their language on the conquered tribes. Fortunately, the Zande failed to eliminate the languages of the conquered. These conquered people continued to practice their culture under Vamungede, their subchief. The Viri people then informed Tambura, the leader of the second invation, of the presence of the Bor tribe living in the caves of the rocky hills, along with their chief, Banguru. However, the Viri were ordered to live together with the Boor people. The two tribes became one people sharing one culture and living in harmony up to the present time. The Bongo people were living nearby and they named the two tribes Beer-landa. Beer in Bongo language means ‘people’ and landa means ‘hills’ or ‘mountains’. Therefore, the words combine to mean ‘the people of the hills.’ The two tribes are still known by this name up to the present time. During the British rule, these tribes along with others were set free from the Zande rule. The Boor people were allowed to go back to their caves. The Viri then joined Ndokili, their chief, who lived on the bank of the Kpongo river. In the course of time, the British Government transferred the Boor to the north of the river Bo, while Viri were taken to reside in Bagari village. Some Viri people were taken to live along the Tambura-Wau road. Some of them were moved to Deim Zubeir and some remained in Zande land and they are still there today. That is why Viri are found in Western Bahr El Ghazal State as well as Western Equatoria State (Evans-Pritchard 1931:24–58).

1.2 The statement, aims and limitations of the study

1.2.1 The statement of the problem

No scholar has attempted to provide any linguistic account of the noun phrase structures in this language prior to the current study. Through research, certain elements of noun phrase structures in Viri have been found to be predictable, while others have not:

1. It is possible to predict the positions of the modifiers in the structures of the noun phrases; some appear before the noun and some occur after the noun. An interesting problem is presented by the homonymous word 'bḯï ̃ which appears in different places before a noun and also after the noun. 2. Cardinal numbers can occur only after a noun in the noun phrase, while the position of ordinal numbers is not predictable; they can appear before or after the noun. Ordinal numbers that occur after a noun are formed by combining the morpheme vã ‘ordinal marker’ plus any cardinal number. These problems that exist within noun phrase structures, however, have led to the following research questions: 1. Is it expected that words of the same class can occur on both sides of a noun? 2. What are the positions of the elements in the noun phrase? 3. How does the behaviour of the noun phrase in Viri compare with expected universals and also other Ubangi languages?

1.2.2 Aims of the study

The aims of the study are 1. to describe the phonological system of the language in question, 2. to provide an adequate grammatical description and analysis of the structures of the noun phrases in Viri, and 3. to identify interesting problems within the Viri noun phrases.

1.2.3 Limitations of the study

This is the first kind of descriptive linguistic study ever devoted to the Viri language. Thus, the study is limited to a description of the structure of the sound system and noun phrases of this language.

1.3 Importance of the study

The importance of the study is that the noun phrases in Viri language have some particularly interesting problems. These problems need to be studied and the findings will be compared with the expected linguistic universals for noun phrases.

1.4 Methodology of the study

The data collected for the research came from the researcher's knowledge of the language. The researcher is a native speaker who has used the language for fifty-two years. All the questionable structures were tested with some elders of the language group for naturalness. Secondary sources of the data collection included: written materials, stories, riddles, etc., from which the grammatical structures were taken for analysis. These sources were mainly stories written to promote literacy. Some of the materials were written by the researcher himself and some by other native speakers. The approaches used for analyzing the data for this study were: (1) the descriptive approach, (2) the analytical approach, and (3) the comparative approach. Therefore, we will describe each approach independently of the others: All kinds of modified noun phrases will be described by using the descriptive method. In this method the relationship between modifiers and their nouns that function as head nouns of noun phrases are described. The second method is the analytical method. In this approach, the data will be analysed in terms of the position of the modifiers in relation to nouns and the status of the elements in the noun phrase. And lastly, the co-occurrence of the elements in noun phrases will be analysed. The third method is the comparative method. This method compares the result of the analysis with those of the other Ubangi languages, the Adamawa languages and finally the Niger-Congo languages. In these comparisons, only the structures of noun phrases will be considered, and also linguistic universals regarding noun phrases.

1.5 Structure of the research

The study consists of six chapters. Chapter one is an introduction to the study. Chapter two concerns itself with a review of the literature that examines linguistic theories and language universals, especially pertaining to nouns and noun phrases. Chapter three provides a phonological overview of Viri. Chapter four is a discussion of modifiers in Viri that come before the noun and an examination of noun phrases of various types with prenominal modifiers. In chapter five, noun phrases with postnominal modifiers are examined. Special emphasis will be put on quantifiers, which are the source of the problems. Chapter six is the conclusion, which summarizes each of the chapters, draws conclusions from each of them, and gives suggestions for further study.

Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Theoretical background

In chapter one, it was noted that the grammar of every language contains structured patterns. These patterns can be studied. In order to study these patterns we concern ourselves with the way they combine in linear order to form the grammatical sentences that we use in our languages. The term “grammar,” in this sense, can be defined as the study of words, their functions and their relationships in sentences. The sentence level, on the other hand, can be perceived as the study of a larger unit which expresses a complete thought that has at least one fully marked verb. Robins (1964:171) argues that grammar is concerned with the structure of stretches of writing and with the grouping and classification of the recurrent elements of utterances by virtue of the functional places they occupy and the relations they contract with one another in the structure. Lyons (1968:54) also defines grammar as the form of words and the manner of their combination in phrases, clauses, and sentences. Some linguists, as mentioned by Tallerman (1998:1), use the term “grammar” to mean the same as “syntax,” although most linguists follow the more recent practice whereby the grammar of a language includes all of its organizing principles, information about the sound system and about the form of words, and how to adjust language according to context. According to Pace (1997:1), linguists usually use the term “morphology” to designate the study of word structures and the term “syntax” to describe the study of structures of larger units. These larger units include sentences, clauses, and phrases, which are made up of words. The words are placed in regular and systematic linear order to form the hierarchy of different structures within structures. In the first part of chapter two, we will concern ourselves with the definition and description of the linguistic terminology that will be used in this paper. This chapter will also include a description of word order for phrase and clause structures, and their types. The second part of the chapter reviews studies in related languages.

2.1.1 Word classes and their functions in noun phrases

In 2.1, we pointed out that the grammar of language is hierarchical and is composed of units (sentence, clause, phrase, word) at different levels. Normally the unit at each level is composed of constituents. For example, the constituents of sentences are clauses, and so on. The constituents focused on in this study are noun phrases and are regarded as units that are part of larger whole units. These constituents may also be composed of units at the next lower level of the hierarchy, that is words, and words are made up of morphemes. Elson and Pickett explain that each grammatical level is a unit in the grammatical hierarchy. They say “morphemes are combined into words, words are combined into phrases, phrases are also combined into simple sentences (or clauses)” (Elson and Pickett 1988:53). Phrases, clauses and sentences are made up of words, which can be organized into grammatical categories, or classes. As mentioned by Pace (1997:11), “Word classes in the linguistic sense, are categories of words defined by their structure and their grammatical function rather than by their meaning.” Pace continues to say, “A word, like a noun, can be defined as a word that can be marked in its structure as singular or plural which functions as the main constituent (subject or object) in a noun phrase” (1997:11). Payne (1997) defines and categorizes adjectives. He points out that an adjective is a word that can be used in a noun phrase. Adjectives normally describe or express the properties of age, size, value, colour, physical characteristics, shape, human propensity and speed (Payne 1997:63). There are also minor word classes, such as pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions. Bickford explains that “any word-level category which does not serve as the head of a phrase is called a minor category” (1998:68). He also finds that in some languages, there are no degree words or other classes to modify adjectives; so there are no adjective phrases, but only adjectives alone (1998:68). Although determiners have no modifiers of their own yet they function to limit the noun in noun phrases. Halliday and Hasan (1976) include the following as determiners in English:

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• articles, including the indefinite article (a, an) and definite article (the); • demonstratives (this, these, that, those), which function to point out specific nouns; and • quantifiers (some, many etc…), which specify a general quantity, while numbers, a type of quantifier (cardinal and ordinal numbers), express specific quantities; and • possessives (my, your, their…), which express possession. The following are specific determiners, considered by Halliday and Hasan as a subclass of determiners: • relative determiners (which, that, who etc.) and • interrogative determiners (whose, what, which). Besides determiners, there is another word category. This word class is an intensifier which has been traditionally called an “adverb of degree.” It adds more intensification to the phrase by modifying the adjectives. Such intensifiers, for instance, are very, and so. We turn now to define some other terms corresponding to the study of this research.

2.1.2 Phrase structure

According to Pace (1997:12), “a phrase is a group or potential group of words that are linked in the same way.” That is, a phrase is the unit of the grammatical hierarchy which is at the level above the word. So words are the units which make up phrases or are the constituents of phrases. Since a phrase is said to be a group of words that are linked, then it must have a structure in which the head is always present. The head or the obligatory constituent being the central word of the phrase may or may not be surrounded by other constituents that are known as optional modifiers. Linda Thomas defines phrases as descriptive units that may contain one or more morphemes. However, she views phrases as the units in which the constituents normally function as components of such structures. Therefore, phrase structures usually contain different parts which function as the subject, predicate and object. So they are known by names such as noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, prepositional phrase, coordinate phrase, etc. (L. Thomas 1993:11). With all these definitions in our minds we can conclude that a phrase is really a group or potential group of words with an obligatory head that must always be present in the structure. A short and vivid definition of the phrase has been presented by Winterowd and Murrary (1985:512). They say, “The phrase is a group of words that does not contain both a subject and a predicate and that performs a single function in a sentence.” While other linguists, Elson and Pickett (1988:73) present an explicit definition of a phrase, that is, “A phrase is a unit potentially composed of two or more words, but which does not have the propositional characteristic of sentence.” They further say, “Phrases typically, but not always, function as elements of a sentence.” A “phrase,” according to their view, may be optionally added to form a sequence of words. For example, if the sequence big boys occurs in one place in the data and the words boys occurs alone elsewhere, both should be classified as noun phrases (NP with an optional adjective) represented in a formula as [(Adj)N]NP. The single noun in the data is included in the NP because potentially it can be expanded into a sequence of two words. However, Cope defined the phrase by using four points or characteristics. She says that the generally agreed upon characteristics of a phrase are as follows:

1. A phrase is a cluster of words which belong together. 2. A phrase does not usually realize a semantic event nor does it occur independently in the mainline of a discourse (both of which are characteristics of clause)…. 3. Phrases normally function as components of clauses. For instance, the bus, didn’t go, to town, and this morning are phrases that realize the functions of agent, activity, spatial location and temporal location in the clause the bus did not go to town this morning. 4. A phrase can be replaced by a single word. Where you have a phrase you may substitute a single word without changing the grammatical structure, although … the meaning will change. (Cope 1994:75) Another definition of a phrase is provided by Richards, Platt and Platt: A phrase is a group of words which forms a grammatical unit. A phrase does not contain a finite verb and does not have a subject-predicate structure. Phrases are usually classified according to their central word or HEAD, e.g., NOUN PHRASE, VERB PHRASE etc.. (1992:53) We will now move on to classifying and defining types of phrases in language.

2.1.3 Types of phrases

As we have seen from the definition of phrases in section 2.1.2 above, all phrases do not have the same structure. Nevertheless, we can divide phrases into types according to various head words found in different phrases. For example, the head word in the phrase the little boy is the noun boy. Thus, the term “phrase” defines or describes all kinds of noun phrases that will be relevant to the research topic. We will also describe other types of phrases such as adjective phrases, prepositional phrases, possessive phrases, etc. In any type of phrase there will always be at least one obligatory constituent, that is, the head of the phrase. This head word is usually surrounded by one or more optional constituents. These constituents are modifiers of the head word. Thus a noun phrase, in this case, will have a noun as a head and various optional constituents such as adjectives, demonstratives and quantifiers, including numbers that function as modifiers of the particular head and will surround it. In sections 2.1.3.1 and 2.1.3.2, we will attempt to describe only the determinative (or modified) noun phrases that will be dealt with in the analysis, that is, phrases which will be analysed in chapter four and chapter five.

2.1.3.1 Noun phrase

“Phrases in the clause positions that realize A(gent) and P(atient) are usually noun phrases” (Cope 1994:79). For example, a teacher and all the dishonest students are noun phrases which consist of what are known as agent and patient in the clause The teacher punished all the dishonest students this morning. The term “agent” is usually used for all the traditional words “subject/doer/actor” while the term “patient” is usually used for the traditional term “direct object.” The noun phrase is realized by more than one semantic construction. In a noun phrase, according to de Villiers and de Villiers (1978:57), “words fall into natural groups called constituents. Roughly speaking, constituents called noun phrases can be replaced by single nouns.” De Villiers and de Villiers consider the role of the noun phrase to be very important; that is, the noun phrase corresponds to the agent or to the patient of the action. Although noun phrases are defined at length, almost all linguists regard the noun as an obligatory constituent which behaves as a head. This head may form a noun phrase with one or more other modifying constituents that function to describe the noun. These modifying elements may come before or after the noun depending on their word class types (Lyons 1968). Watters (2000:203) has argued that “the modifiers in the noun phrase must agree with the head noun as well as the subject (‘anaphoric’) pronoun of the second clause.” Some linguists, such as Linda Thomas (1993), prefer to call the modifiers by their positions of occurrence in the phrases. For example, those modifiers that come before nouns are called pre- modifiers and those which follow the nouns are called post-modifiers. Fries (1970) claims that a noun phrase is a type of construction composed of a noun which is the head with any modifiers that it happens to have. According to him, this rough definition includes a wide range of phenomena, but it excludes a number of construction types which are quite similar to noun phrases both in form and function. In particular, pronouns may be excluded. DFor example, We here at the main offices, we three judges, you in the room, someone else and anyone in the water are groups composed of a personal pronoun or an indefinite pronoun and its modifiers. Certainly Fries' definition also includes the construction of a temporal noun phrase, for example, this year, next month, etc. Usually, such phrases, according to Fries, do not appear with any modifier other than this or next (Fries 1970:1). On the other hand, Payne (1997:33) shows that a noun phrase can be defined based on the distribution of nouns within phrases, that is, “in phrases nouns serve as heads of noun phrases.” Thus, the head of a noun phrase is the one word in the phrase which refers to the same entity that the whole phrase refers to. He says an English phrase like that computerman refers to a time-stable concept, so we suspect, it is a noun phrase with man as the head noun (1997:33). Other relative noun phrases that will be discussed in the research are relative appositional phrases, coordinate phrases, etc. In the next section we will turn our attention to coordinate phrases.

2.1.3.2 Coordinate phrases

Coordinate phrases are constructions in which similar participants of equal importance are conjoined. Robins (1964:226) views coordinate phrases as “constructions in which the entities could be replaced with one another.” For instance, in the noun phrase men and women, either men or women could be replaced. So men and women is actually a coordinate noun phrase. Another example of a coordinate phrase also shows the participants filling a role which indicates the additive or alternative relationship, for example, (1) the man and his friend, (2) either you or your son. In addition, there is a viewpoint that some coordinate phrases consist of two heads which are conjoined by conjunctions and or or. Elson and Pickett (1988:87) present another type of coordinate noun phrase called a serial phrase. Serial phrases may include the following types of noun phrases: 1. A modified noun phrase, e.g. a tall man and little girl. 2. A modified noun phrase including a modified adjective phrase, e.g. a very big man and a white dog. 3. More nuclear noun phrases of which the conjunction only occurs at the end while one of the noun phrases is optional. This optional noun phrase may be repeated, e.g. an orange, a lemon or a grape 4. A coordinate noun phrase embedded within a prepositional phrase such as PCoordNP, e.g. to the classroom and the library. It has been argued that in some languages such as English, the use of coordination is highly developed. For instance, the dog and the cat; here the determinative (or modified) noun phrases are coordinated by the conjunction and while in some languages, the coordination may or may not have a mark as in the determinative phrase we have been describing. In some languages also, the process of the coordination may be related to the structure of the determinative. We will now turn to define the appositive phrases in the next section.

2.1.3.3 Appositive phrases

In an appositive phrase, two noun phrases may be used together to refer to the same thing. That is, the “two words or phrases are simply placed next to each other; one making more definite or explicit the meaning of the other, rather than modifying it in the usual sense” (Elson and Pickett 1988:86). However, the two words or phrases are separated only by a pause. Some linguists frequently use the term “apposition” to denote such a construction. English examples given by Elson and Pickett are: “my friend, Mr. Jones; my neighbor, the little old man; Marion’s house, the one next door” (1988:86). Payne also argues that “it may be difficult to distinguish left dislocation from apposition of a free noun phrase to the clause” (1997:274). He argues that “if the initial noun phrase has no role in the sentence, then it is probably an appositional phrase.” Thus, he calls such a phrase, “a juxtaposition phrase” (1997:275). The term “apposition” as applied by Bloomfield (1933) is a word that is used when paratactically joined forms are grammatically, but not in meaning, equivalent; for instance, Peter, the poor man. He further says, “when the appositional phrase appears in included position, one of its members is equivalent to a parenthesis. James, the famous man, has escaped.” (Bloomfield 1933:186).

2.1.3.4 Prepositional phrases

A prepositional phrase has been defined as a phrase that is “constructed by combining a preposition with a modified noun phrase” (Elson and Pickett 1988:83). In addition, for Cope (1994:87), a “preposition phrase” or a “postposition phrase,” also known as a “relator-axis phrase” can fill various positions in the clause. Cope explains the semantic functions of the preposition phrase as recipient, beneficiary, spatial location, time location and instrument. A preposition phrase is not an expansion of a word in a central position, as noun phrases and verb phrases are. Rather, a preposition phrase is made up of a word which relates (usually) a pronoun, a noun, or noun phrase to a larger construction, usually a clause. (1994:87)

Bouquiaux and Thomas define the prepositional phrase in terms of governor elements. They say that a relator noun phrase (RNP) usually…consists of a single word or some noun phrase which constitutes the governed element, and a governor that we call a relator because it gives the phrase a sort of autonomy and indicates generally its function, as in with them and like his brother. (1994:131) The word governor (relator) is used for the preposition and the word governed is used for the element, whether it is a personal pronoun or a determinative noun phrase. For example, “with them and like his brother” (Bouquiaux 1994:131). In some languages it is possible to restrict governed elements that are grammatical in nature. In languages that have governed elements that are restricted, those of a grammatical nature must be carefully distinguished from those of a semantic nature. These types of phrases may not be represented in languages which do not use relators. In this perspective, the relator noun phrase (RNP) may be considered as “a particular type of determinative noun phrase where the governor (relator) is the head and the governed element (grammatical category or phrase) is the modifier. In this type of phrase, the relationship of determination is obligatory (in many languages, at least).

This obligatory relationship is not restricted to the category of the heads (the relators). Numerous languages have various types of obligatory relationships on the phrase level. (Bouquiaux and Thomas 1992:132). In English, there are certain relator noun phrases that are irreducible, for instance, the phrase with him, since the head (relator) with cannot occur without the obligatory modifier…. [They] state that, “certain determinative relations are obligatory at such level while others are optional or complementary” (Bouquiaux and Thomas 1992:133).

2.1.3.5 Nominal phrases of minor types

We have been dealing with major phrases of different types which contain the obligatory head nouns and a number of optional modifiers. These noun phrases are common types although they are not the only types of noun phrases that we have in various languages. In fact, there are other noun phrases with pronouns instead of nouns acting as heads. Other noun phrase types are usually those with demonstratives, quantifiers or numbers. Such noun phrases have no modifiers of their own. “The term nominal phrase includes all noun phrases that have a noun or pronoun as head that are actually modifiers” (Pace 1997:20). Blake (1994:203) states that “the nominal phrase is a cover term for noun and pronoun which may cover other words that have some properties of nouns but not all.” Blake goes on to say, “In traditional grammar, nouns and pronouns were considered separate parts of speech” (1994:203). Nominal phrases often contain proper noun heads, that is, a proper noun phrase consists of a proper name such as the name of a person or of a place. Bickford states that the proper noun phrase should be considered a different noun phrase type than the common noun phrase, because “most of the time proper nouns occur without any modifiers. English common nouns, on the other hand, usually cannot appear unmodified when they are singular” (Bickford 1998:53). On the other hand, pronouns, like proper nouns, can stand freely in the noun phrase. These are called free-standing pronouns. The pronouns are divided into two parts, one set is called definite pronouns, like he, she, it, they. The other pronoun set is called indefinite pronouns and they are as follows: someone, somebody or something. These words are in the same type of noun phrase. Generally, a pronoun as the head of an NP requires a different NP type since pronouns do not have modifiers as common nouns or proper nouns do. L. Thomas (1993) argues that, if a pronoun rather than a noun is the head of the phrase, the form of the phrase changes radically or is more restricted. She further considers the nominal phrases to describe the participants (people, things) that take part in events. “In most cases nominal phrases often have a noun in the head slot but may have a pronoun or a name as head” (L. Thomas 1993:34).

2.1.3.6 Nominal phrases with two head nouns

Adjectives are not the only word class that are used to describe nouns. Sometimes, a noun may be used to modify another noun. Givón (1990:470) suggests that, “A noun may be used in English to modify a head noun, very much like an adjective.” Givón further states that, “Modifying nouns often yield noun compounds, that is, derived new nouns” (1990:470). Elson and Pickett (1988:85) have regarded two nouns as being noun-noun phrases or constructions that show many different semantic relationships between them. Consider the phrases teacup ‘a cup made for tea’ and banana tree ‘tree which produces bananas’. The paraphrases in single quotes provide two of the possible types of relationships between the modifying nouns and the head nouns. In this case, the first noun is a modifier noun describing the second noun.

2.1.3.7 Possessive noun phrases

A possessive noun phrase may contain a noun modified by a possessor or a possessive pronoun. For example, these possessive pronouns include the ‘first person singular/plural’ my/our, the ‘second person singular/plural’ you/your and the ‘third person singular/plural’ his, her, its/they. All these possessive pronouns are normally used either before the nouns or after the nouns or possessive phrases depending on the type of syntactic structure in the language. For example, the dog's tail or the tail of the dog. In addition to such possessive phrases, “There are those which may be included within a modified noun phrase as one of the modifiers.” For instance, possessive phrases may consist of a modified noun phrase, such as the little girl plus the suffix -s which becomes the little girl's (hands). “The possessed noun in parenthesis is optionally used” (Elson and Pickett 1988:75). In some languages, another type of possessive phrase may include an ordinary modified noun phrase. This type may be followed by a possessive phrase. Nevertheless, the possessive phrase in such a case may be composed of the preposition of plus a possessive pronoun (e.g. mine). Or the same type of possessive phrase that normally precedes the noun (e.g. the farmer’s). The alternative construction for such a type is the one without the possessive suffix. For example, two friends of Mr. Mark (Elson and Pickett 1988:76). As Payne (1997:102) mentions, “Languages typically express many semantic relationships with the same formal construction used to express ownership.” These formal constructions, he says, may be called possessive constructions even though the semantic relationship is not always one of possession. Payne provides an example to illustrate such claim as my teacher. According to him, the phrase my teacher does not refer to the ownership of the teacher that is possessed in the same way that the phrase my clothes does. In fact, my clothes refers to clothes that I possess while the phrase my teacher does not refer to a teacher that I personally own as my property. Thus, Payne considers a possessive noun phrase to contain two elements (i.e. a possessor and possessed item) this means that a possessor in this case can be regarded as the genitive (regardless of whether the language has a morphological genitive case). However, Payne (1997:104) points out that the possessed item can be defined as the possessed or the possessee. For example, Mary’s in the phrase Mary’s dog is the possessor and the word dog is the possessed or possessee. One also could say the love of my life. The phrase the love is the possessed while the phrase of my life is the possessor. In addition to the above definitions and exemplifications of the possessive noun phrase, Payne (1997:105) argues that some languages can make formal distinctions based on the semantic difference between alienable and inalienable possession. Alienable, unlike inalienable possession, is semantically the kind of possession which can be terminated, for example I can transfer possession of my worldly goods to someone else, hence, my relationship to my worldly goods is one of alienable possession. For inalienable possession Payne claims that it is the kind of possession which cannot be terminated. Languages which distinguish inalienable possession often include kinship terms and body parts within the class of inalienably possessed items … my head will always be my head and my brothers and sisters will always be my brothers and sisters. (1997:105) There is another type of possession which may be regarded as similar but not identical to inalienable possession. Payne calls this type “inherent possession.” He further states that the inherently possessed items may include body parts, kinship terms and items of personal adornment (1997:105).

Elson and Pickett regard possession of nouns to have affixation or modifying phrases: Possession in some languages is marked differently for nouns that are viewed as more loosely possessed (alienable) than those that are intrinsically associated with the possessor (inalienable). Alienable nouns may occur with or without the accompaniment of possessive affixes, while possession is always expressed for in alienable nouns. So inalienable includes body parts, kinship terms. Possessors are commonly possessive pronouns (or adjectives), noun or noun phrases. (1988:35) Now it can be recognized that the possessor NP, includes the possessive affix –s, e.g. Mary’s and the little girl’s. Therefore, the order of the possessed noun and its possessor according to Elson and Pickett (1988:35) varies from language to language. However, possessor expressions may all precede or all follow the nouns in the possessive noun phrases. Sometimes the distributions for different types of possessors may vary. So, such feature of order has been cited as an important classification criterion in the study of human languages. (Elson and Pickett 1988:78) Concerning possession, Givón (1984:62) argues, “it is very common in languages for pronouns referring to the possessor of the noun to be cliticized as a prefix or suffix on the noun.” Givón further expresses the locative head noun relationship in terms of the construction as a locative expression. For example, in the phrase on top of the house, the phrase of the house functions in the larger phrase on top of the house as a genitive modifier. This genitive modifier is embedded in another locative noun phrase or simply the prepositional phrase on top. “In a language with post-nominal genitives, this diachronic reanalysis gives rise to locative prepositions. While in a language with prenominal genitives, the same reanalysis gives rise to locative post-positions” (1984:230).

2.1.3.8 Adjective phrases

Bickford views an adjective as a word which is used to “describe a property or a characteristic of a noun (1998:8). According to Bickford, “adjectives, in some sentence positions, can also modify pronouns as in he was greatly embarrassed” (1998:8). On the other side, Wilson prefers to define an adjective in the following way: “An adjective usually expounds the sex, value age, physical property, size or colour of the head noun.” He argues that “on rare occasions the head noun may be modified by two or more adjectives.” (Wilson 1996:83). Tallerman defines adjective phrases as “phrases in which adjectives may pair with a special set of closed class words. These closed class words, are words termed as degree modifiers (1998:43).” The term “degree modifier” indicates that the closed class words specify the extent or degree to which something is, say, full or heavy. Furthermore, Tallerman goes on to describe adjective phrases in the following way: Adjective phrases have two basic functions which are known as the attributive and predicative. Attributive adjective phrases modify nouns and have a fixed position. That is, in some languages adjectives optionally precede or follow the nouns they modify. While in other languages adjectives appear on both sides of the noun. (Tallerman 1998:43)

2.1.3.9 Quantifier phrases

Quantifier phrases may be defined as phrases in which the quantifiers are modified by adverbs of degree. Such adverbs are called intensifiers (e.g. very, too) in phrases such as very many people and too many people. Halliday and Hasan (1976) speak at large on the concept of quantifiers. They focus on specific and non-specific quantifiers. The specific quantifiers are numbers such as cardinal numbers, while the non-specific ones are words such as every, each, all, both, any, either, neither, some, and a. These “non-specific deictics,” as they call them, may be combined only through the use of a partitive qualifier, e.g. each of my children, any of the answers, some of that pudding. The exceptions are all and both which are joined directly to another determiner, as predeictic position, as in all our yesterdays, both these gates. (Halliday and Hasan 1976:155)

2.1.3.10 Demonstrative phrases

Demonstrative adjectives (or determiners) are words such as this/that with their plural form these/ those. The demonstrative adjectives are usually used before the noun or after the noun which they modify. The modification is made by pointing at the specific noun located in a definite place in relation to the speaker or hearer. For example, when we say ‘this boy’ or ‘these boys’, ‘this’ and ‘these’ tell us that the position of the boy or boys is near to the speaker and far from the hearer. On the other hand, when we say ‘that girl’ or ‘those girls’ the distance of the specified nouns is far from the speaker and near the hearer, respectively. Halliday and Hasan explain the demonstrative adjectives as follows: Nominal demonstratives this, these, that, those and the refer to the location of something, typically some entity—person or object—that is participating in the process, thus they occur as elements within the nominal group. They belong to the class of determiners, and have the experiential function of deictic; in the logical structure they function either as modifier or as head, with the exception of the which is a modifier only. In this respect the nominal demonstratives resemble the possessives, which can also function either as modifier or as head, although, unlike the possessives, the demonstratives have only one form. (1976:58) In fact, the word “definite” in a grammatical or semantic sense is used to refer to a specific or identifiable entity. The authors of A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language claim that English speakers normally use the article the to convey the definiteness of nominal structures in the language. However, other word classes such as the possessive pronouns my, your, and his, the relative pronouns which and whose, and the demonstratives this and that also convey definiteness. (Quirk et al., as cited in Wilson 1996:68) Givón describes how DEF-markers are diachronically developed and also lists determiners in English: One of the most common ways for a language to diachronically develop a DEF-marker is through the de-marking of a deictic/demonstrative modifier. Most commonly it is the distant demonstrative that undergoes such a development, but it is possible to develop not only definite but also indefinite articles. (Givón 1984:418–419)

Determiners (DET) in English include the definite article the, the demonstratives this, that, these, those, the indefinite articles a(n) and some (for written English), the unstressed four demonstratives (for colloquial English), and the non-referring any and no. (Givón 1990:468–9) Regarding degrees of distance in demonstratives, Payne asserts that demonstratives in the English system have two degrees of distance represented by the forms ‘this’ and ‘that’ or ‘these’ and ‘those’ in the plural. Other languages may have three degrees or four degrees of distance. In case there appears to be more than three degrees of distance, chances are in some other parameters that the system is sensitive between items close to the hearer, items close to the speaker and items distant from both. (1997:102) Payne further says that “others code the difference between visible items and non-visible items” (1997:103).

2.1.3.11 Interrogative adjective phrases

An interrogative adjective (determiner) plus a noun forms a type of noun phrase in which the words like which, what and whose appear before or after the noun that they modify, for example, which book?, what man?, and whose hands? According to Winterowd and Murray, “When the words which, what and whose are used in front of a noun it is used as an adjective or modifier, not as an interrogative pronoun” (Winterowd and Murray 1985:328).

2.1.4 Word order in the syntax of noun phrase

Word order is the arrangement of words in syntactic relationship according to their status and function. Languages tend to use word order either more extensively or sparingly. Languages that

16 make extensive use of word order are called flexible order languages, while those that use word order sparingly are called, by contrast, rigid order languages (Givón 1984:188). Although basic word order typology is obtained through various orders of language typology we will restrict our investigation only to word orders of noun phrases. Givón (1984:189) cites Greenberg (1966), who argues that if a language has the order of Object- Verb (OV) in its simple clauses, it should have the order Modifier-Noun (M-N) in its noun phrases. But if it has the order Verb-Object (VO) in its simple clauses, it should have the order noun-modifier (N-M) in noun phrases. There is no general agreement over the current issues of word order in Niger-Congo languages. Williamson (1989:28) cites Hyman, Givón, and Williamson as linguists who hold the view that “Proto-Niger-Congo was an SOV language.” She states that others, namely Heine (1976,1980), Heine and Reh (1984), argue that “Proto-Niger-Congo was an SVO language and that SOV word order was an innovation arising from nominal periphrasis, i.e. the use of a tense-aspect-modal marker…in place of the verb” (Williamson 1989:28). Boyd points out that in Adamawa-Ubangi noun phrase syntax, the word order in associative (genitive) construction is such that the head noun (possessed noun) is likely to precede the determining noun (noun possessor) or noun phrase. However, he adds that some languages, e.g. Duru (Adamawa 4) and Mumuye (Adamawa 5) dialects, and Ndunga (Ubangi 2.C) use both this and the reverse order for the purpose of expressing two types of possession, often referred to as alienable/inalienable… Adjectives are regularly postnominal in Adamawa, but (with the exception of noun class languages) prenominal in Ubangi. (1989:207). That is, an adjective plus noun construction, are common. Also, the modifying relative clauses, demonstratives, numerals (In Ubangi, at least, a preposed numeral is often ordinal) are postposed. (Boyd 1989:208) Bouquiaux and Thomas (1992:126) also speak of the word order of the phrase elements in languages. They argue that some the order in some languages have only one of the following possibilities while other languages have several. Thus, the orders may be:

head + determiner + modifier modifier + determiner + head

determiner + head + modifier determiner + modifier + head

head + modifier + determiner modifier + head + determiner

Another important point regarding word order is made by Comrie. Comrie (1981:84), in the study of language universals and language typology, finds that in the relative word order of noun phrase parameters, “There are only two possibilities for basic order, namely AN [adjective noun] and NA [noun adjective].” Comrie argues that, “AN constructions can be found in languages such as English and Turkish, while NA structure is usually found in languages such as French and Welsh.” Comrie also says that in addition to such structures, “French and Welsh have some adjectives which can precede their nouns.” Moreover, he says that “there is a set of adjectives that usually precede nouns as in both French and Welsh languages.” In addition to these arguments he confirms that “it seems to be generally true that languages with the basic word order NA are more tolerant of exceptions of this kind than are languages with the basic word order AN.” (1981:84). Besides AN and NA structures, there are other related structures that need to be included in our definitions. These conceptual related parameters are as follows: Related to adjective-noun order, at least conceptually, is the order of head noun (N) and relative clause (Rel) in the relative clause construction. Again there are two possible orders, either the head noun precedes the relative clause as in English, or the relative clause precedes the head as in Turkish. Adjectives and relative clauses are similar conceptually but they differ in word order: English is AN but Turkish is NRel. (Comrie 1981:84)

2.2 Relative clause

The relative clause may be thought of as a construction that is entirely embedded in a noun phrase and which may describe the head noun. The relative clause primarily acts as an adjective when it specifies what the head noun refers to or provides additional information about it. Bickford (1998) views the relative clause as consisting of two types namely: restrictive relative clauses and non-restrictive relative clauses. He describes each type as follows: A restrictive relative clause specifies or narrows down the class of entities referred to by the head noun… [For example,] The man who ran over our Frisbee in his pickup truck yesterday came by to apologize…. Each relative clause identifies which individual in some large class is the one that is being referred to in this particular case…. If we just said the man, we could be talking about millions of different people; the relative clause identifies which one of those many people we are talking about. In contrast, a nonrestrictive relative clause provides additional information about the head noun, but does not help identify who or what we are talking about, usually because the identification is complete without the relative clause. In English, nonrestrictive relative clauses are surrounded by pauses, which we write with commas[:] My oldest brother, who is a famous piccolo player, will perform in Kalamazoo next week. (Bickford 1998:332) The difference between the two types of relative clauses is shown by the commas used in non- restrictive relative clauses. What happens if the relative clause is removed from the main clause? Even if we remove a non-restrictive relative clause from the main clause there is no problem with the meaning of the main clause. “A relative clause can function as a nominal modifier” (Payne 1997:325). A relative clause can be prenominal, postnominal, internally headed or they may be headless. Since they are the noun modifiers they can occur in the same positions as descriptive adjectives, numbers etc.

2.3 Other related languages

Although Viri has not been studied as a separate or individual language, it has been grouped with the most closely related languages for comparative study purpose. Santandrea (1934), as cited in Tucker and Bryan (1966), published a comparative grammar of Ndogo, Sere, Bai and Viri. In Tucker and Bryan (1966), a number of Ubangian languages related to Viri were added for a comparative study. The languages are as follows: Mundu, Mayogo, Banda, Banga, Ngbaka Mabo, Ngbaka Babayo, and Gbaya Kaka. There has been no particular linguistic work carried out by any scholar on Viri. All works that have been done on the Viri language involve the comparative study of word lists or morphology, short phrases or short sentences. See appendix A for a list of publications in Viri.

Chapter 3 Phonological Overview of the Viri Language

3.0 Introduction

It is generally accepted that in order to study the grammar of a language, there needs to be a foundation in phonetics and phonology to accurately write down the sounds and words: Phonetics is the study of the speech sounds which tell us how these sounds are articulated by the speech organs. Although phonology is also the study of speech sounds, it further tells us how these sounds are structured and how they function to convey meaning. (Hyman 1975:2) Viri phonology contains phonological systems that are common to the Niger-Congo languages, that is, it offers complex sounds that contain phonemic contrast or distinctiveness of the phonemes, some patterns of morphophonemic changes and a complex system of tones. Thus, all of these systems have contributed to offer stimulating grounds for phonetic and phonological study of the language. This chapter aims at presenting an overview of Viri phonology, focusing especially on its phonemic inventories, feature contrasts, distinctive features of consonants and vowels, minimal pairs, phonemes, graphemes, [ATR] distinctiveness, vowel harmony, tone, syllable structure, orthographic equivalents and morphology. We will now look at the consonants and the inventory of consonant phonemes before moving to the vowel sounds of the language.

3.1 Consonants

A consonant is defined by Nasr as “any of the speech sounds made by partly or completely stopping the flow of air as it goes through the mouth; a phoneme of this kind” (Nasr 1980:170). According to Burquest and Payne (1993), consonant sounds that have the feature [+Consonantal] are made with a significant stricture in the oral cavity. They define “significant stricture” as any stricture which is more than that found in vowels or semivowels. All true consonants are thus [+Consonantal]…. For describing the pronunciation of consonants, positions along the horizontal parameter are points of articulation from front to back in the mouth, while positions along the vertical parameter are manners of articulation. Moving from top to bottom the consonants generally go from those with greatest degree of closure (plosives) to those with the least closure (semi vowels or glides). (Burquest and Payne 1993:16) A phonetic description includes all the articulatory features which characterize the phoneme and its realizations. For instance, a sound in a language may be described phonetically as a voiceless bilabial oral stop, while as a phoneme it is described as voiceless in contrast to another phonetically similar segment or phoneme with feature voiced (Bouquiaux and Thomas 1992:98). There are twenty-nine phonetic consonants in Viri. Of these consonants five are voiceless consonants, while the rest are voiced. The voiceless consonants are [t, k, kp, f, s].2 There are three voiceless plosives [t, k, kp] and two voiceless fricatives [f, s]. There are four phonetically voiced plosives [d, dz, g, gb ] and two implosives [ɓ, ɗ]. The remaining voiced consonants include the following: fricatives [v, z], nasals [m, n, ŋ], prenasals [nv, nd, ndz, nz, ŋg, ŋmgb], lateral [1], trill [r] and flap [ɾ]. The trill can be found in initial and final word position, while the flap sound is found intervocalically. Thus, the phoneme /r/ —> [ɾ]/ V_V, and [r] elsewhere. So [ɾ] and [r] are in complementary distribution. The final voiced consonantal sounds are the glides [j, w]. Table 3.1 shows the phonetic consonants in Viri.

2 In this paper, IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols are used only in chapter three, the phonological overview of Viri. In chapters four and five, the orthographic symbols are used instead.

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Table 3.1. The phonetic consonants in Viri

Place Bilabial Labio- Alveolar Palatal Velar Labio-velar Manner dental Plosives t d ɉ k g kp gb Implosives ɓ ɗ Affricates dz Fricatives f v s z Nasals m n ŋ Pre-nasals nv nd nz, ndz nɉ ŋg ŋmgb Lateral l Trill/flap r ɾ Glides j w

3.1.1 Minimal pairs or consonant contrasts

In this section, we will attempt to determine which sounds actually belong to the same class by examining their distribution. It has been stated by phonologists that two sounds that are phonetically similar may occur in the same phonetic environment. And if one sound is substituted for another and this results in a difference in meaning, then they are different phonemes. For instance, if [k] is substituted for the [g] in the word [gòrò] ‘to smell,’ a different meaning will result, namely [kòɾò] ‘grandchild’. Thus, we conclude that /k/ and /g/ are different phonemes and the words [gòɾò] and [kòɾò] are a minimal pair. However, [kòɾò] ‘grandchild’ and [gòmò] ‘bending of something’ are not minimal pairs because they differ in both their initial and medial consonants. Also, [kòɾò] ‘grandchild’ and [ròkò] ‘bony like’ do not form a minimal pair, even if they contain the same three sounds, since there are still two differences between the words. That is to say, initially, [kòɾò] has a [k] while [ròkò] has a [r]. Secondly, [kòɾò] has an [ɾ] while [ròkò] has a [k] between the vowels. That means both sounds [ɾ] and [k] occur between the vowels. Therefore, when we want to establish a minimal pair (or consonant contrast), the two sounds that are phonetic manifestations of two different phonemes in the same phonetic environment must be obtained. Table 3.2 shows minimal pairs of phonetic consonants in Viri as evidence of consonant contrast that occurs primarily in initial position, with one instance of contrast in medial position.

Table 3.2. Consonant minimal pair contrasts

Contrasts Word 1 Word 2 t d tíɾí load díɾí stone k g kàɾà to pour/turn gàɾà bell kp gb kpáà leaf gbáà boat k kp kó type of plant kpó laziness d ɗ do a lie ɗo to be/stay ɓ gb ɓà to see gbà buffalo d ɾ dù to dig rù to bite many times ɗ ɾ ɗi who ri to ambush f v fala to roll vala to push forward s z seɾè by zeɾé a kind of plant nz z nzoɾò wild cat zoɾò to hang on something w j wi fire ji a thing ŋ ŋg ŋo you (sg) ŋgo water w r kèwè to scratch kèɾè basket r l rò to stop lò to cook ŋg g ŋguɾù chicken guɾù a hole gb ŋmgb gbàŋgà to shake ŋmgbàŋgà a case nd d ndè a work dè a kind of monkey n nd nè a trap ndè a work n nv nó a walk nvó a mark n nz nò to walk nzò an orphan nv v nvèlè heritage vèlè a sling m n mè tongue nè a trap

Note that there are alternate pronunciations which are not shown in table 3.2. For example, [z] and [dz] are alternate sounds word initially in the word that is pronounced either [zḯ] or [dzḯ] ‘an expression of surprise’. There are also two alternate pronunciations of ‘food’, which are either [nzá] or [ndzá], depending on whether the speaker uses [nz] or [ndz] word initially. We can say [z] is in free variation with [dz], and that [nz] is in free variation with [ndz]. These sounds are in free variation since they do not contrast in words or meanings of words. This is the result of an alternate pronunciation of the same word by one or more speakers of a given language. Free variation according to Lyons (1968:114) and Hyman (1975:65) is defined in terms of the occurrences of two phonetically different consonants, which do not contrast in the same environment. That is to say, the substitution of one sound for another does not provide us with any different word at all but only a different pronunciation of the same word, so [z] and [dz] are free variants of the same phoneme and [nz] and [ndz] are also free variants of the same phoneme. We will now turn to discuss the inventory of consonant phonemes in the language.

3.1.2 Consonant phonemes inventory

The symbols that we use for writing are made of basic abstract units called phonemes and a complete set of these units is called the phonemic system of a language (Roach 2000:40). Other linguists define a phoneme as “a distinctive phonological unit in a given language which can be shown to contrast with other phonetically similar units” (Burquest and Payne 1993:35). Viri, like other languages of the world, shows contrast in its phonemic system. The structure of the consonant phoneme inventory of Viri is found in table 3.3, which lists all consonant phonemes according to their place and manner of articulation.

Table 3.3. Consonant phonemes of Viri

Place Bilabial Labio- Alveolar Palatal Velar Labio- Manner dental velar Plosives t d k g kp gb Implosives ɓ ɗ Fricatives f v s z Nasals m n ŋ Prenasals nv nd nz ŋg ŋmgb Lateral l Trill r Glides j w

3.1.3 Orthographic equivalents for consonants

Table 3.4 shows the orthographic symbols used in writing the data for this research. These orthographic symbols indicate the symbols currently in use by the Viri community.

Table 3.4. Orthographic symbols used for consonants in Viri

Place Bilabial Labio- Alveolar Palatal Velar Labio- Manner dental velar Plosives t d k g kp gb Implosives 'b ꞌd Fricatives f v s z Nasals m n ŋ Prenasals nv nd nz ng mgb Lateral l Trill r Glides y w

The sequence of /ŋg/ is written as and the sequence /ŋmgb/ is written after /ŋ/ is dropped from sequence. The implosives that were phonetically written as [ɓ], [ɗ] are written with preglottalized diacritics as <'b, 'd>. The palatal approximant [j ] is written . We will now discuss the vowel system in Viri.

3.2 Vowels

Vowels are found in every language of the world. “Vowels are normally made with a voiced egressive air-stream, i.e. without any closure or narrowing as would result in consonantal sound.” Lyons defines vowels in terms of three articulatory dimensions: the degree to which the mouth is opened (close v. open); the position of the highest part of the tongue (front vs. back) and the position of the lips (round vs. spread, or unrounded)… A certain sound may be described as a close, front, rounded vowel… another as close, front, unrounded. (1968:103)

3.2.1 Vowel inventory

To begin the discussion of Viri phonetic vowels, see table 3.5, which presents a phonetic inventory. Word lists that include these phonetic vowels can be found in appendices B and C.

Table 3.5. Phonetic vowel inventory

Front Central Back unrounded unrounded rounded High close i ɪ u ʊ High mid e ɛ o ɔ Low open ǝ a

In this section we will discuss the contrasts among the vowels, that is, we will give an inventory of vowels and their distribution in words, showing differences of meaning. Two phonetically similar sounds contrast when they occur in the same environments and if one is substituted for another, a difference in meaning results. We will use two sets (A) and (B). Set (A) contains [+ATR] and set B contains [–ATR] vowels. [ATR] designates the Advance Tongue Root which has been employed for the description of the feature of vowels that are produced with expanded pharynx [+Ex] (Gilley 1992:28). Thus, consider the minimal pairs for the vowels in example (1).

Set A [+ATR] Set B [–ATR] (1) a. fùlù dust fʊ̀lʊ̀ to praise b. sogo last born sɔgɔ to hate c. vi a kind of tree vɪ to make red d. nzi salt nzɪ to kill e. yeè up yɛɛ̀ medicine f. tú earth tʊ́ a message g. gǝrǝ a gourd with a handle gara to burn slightly

We have seen that the vowels in set A contrast with the vowels in set B in identical environments. Therefore, all the phonetic vowels in Viri are also phonemes (see table 3.5).

3.2.2 Advanced tongue root [ATR]

The shape and the position of the tongue root may affect the vowel quality in the process of production. During the production, the tongue root may advance (i.e. move forward) or it may retract (i.e. move backward). The advanced tongue root movement may cause the size of the pharyngeal cavity to expand or enlarge and the larynx to lower, while the backward movement may cause the size of the pharyngeal cavity to decrease. This increase and decrease sets up two distinct vowel sets. One is marked [+ATR] vowels and the other is marked by [–ATR] vowels (Chapman et al. 1990:80). Clements (2000:135) views the [ATR] vowel harmony system in the following way: All (or a subset of) of vowels in the word tend to agree in a given distinctive feature [±F]. One value of the feature is said to be “dominant” if it always spreads to all other vowels in the word, never yielding to the opposite value. In dominant harmony systems, dominant vowels occur in both roots and suffixes… In these systems, roots harmonise with any suffixes bearing the dominant value of [±F]... In root-controlled systems, dominant vowels are restricted to roots and consequently roots never harmonise with suffixes. (Clements 2000:135) In Viri there are ten harmonic vowels which may be classified into two sets of five vowels, based on advanced tongue root [ATR]. That is to say, one of the two sets, assigned to set A, contains all vowels characterized by [+ATR] vowels, /i e ǝ o u/. The other set, assigned to set B, contains all vowels characterized by [–ATR] vowels, /ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ/, as in table 3.6

Table 3.6. Set A and set B of vowels

Set A [+ATR] Set B [–ATR] i u ɪ ʊ e o ɛ ɔ ǝ a

In Clements’ definition of vowel harmony, he states that in this process, “all (or a subset of) vowels in the word, tend to agree in a given distinctive feature” (2000:135). We will continue to discuss vowel harmony in Viri, and provide examples. In example (2), all the vowels are [+ATR].

(2) a. kóngǝ̀ a kind of bird b. dùmǝ̀ beer made from honey c. nulé small fishes made to rot for food d. limo a kind of fruit that is acid tasting e. kùlè a kind of wild dove

In example (3), all the vowels are of the feature [–ATR]. [–ATR] is the default value in this language.

(3) a. kʊ̀sɛ́ navel b. dʊ̀ngà a kind of small animal c. kɛsì three stones that food is cooked on d. lɛ̀mɪ̀ sweet e. tàyɔ́ dawn

In example (4), we see words whose root have the feature of [+ATR]. However, when a suffix is added to the [+ATR] root, the suffix takes on the [+ATR] form so that all the vowels in word become [+ATR].

(4a) /gbere/ ‘to paralyze’ + /-ɪ/ ‘it’  /gberei/ ‘paralyze it’ (4b) /fù/ ‘to mix/ + /-ɪ/ ‘it’  /fùi/ ‘mix it’

In example (5) the suffix remains unchanged when combined with a [-ATR] root, showing the vowel harmony between them.

(5a) /zà/ ‘to eat’ + /-ɪ/ ‘it’  /zàɪ́/ ‘eat it’ (5b) /fɛlɛ/ ‘to squeeze’ + /-ɪ/ ‘it’  /fɛlɛɪ́/ ‘eat it’

Example (6) shows that there is only left to right spreading from the root, with root controlled harmony. Prefixes are unaffected by vowel harmony, as they are to the left of the root. In (6a), the word nvɛ ‘owner’ is added as the first part to the root of a nominal compound which has two lexical roots. In this compound word, the [+ATR] vowel of /wili/ is blocked from altering the vowel of the first part to harmonize with the [+ATR] value of the root vowel. In (6b), the vowel of the root has [–ATR] value. Therefore, the value of the first part is not affected by vowel harmony.

(6a) /nvɛ/ ‘owner’ + /wili/ ‘to heat’  /nvɛ-wili/ ‘guest’ (6b) /nvɛ/ ‘owner’ + /kpɔ́/ ‘laziness’  /nvɛ-kpɔ́/ ‘lazy person’

3.2.3 Orthographic equivalents for vowels

Table 3.7 shows the orthographic symbols that were used for writing the data for this research paper. These orthographic symbols indicate symbols currently in use by the Viri community.

Table 3.7. The orthographic symbols used for vowels

Front Central Back unrounded unrounded rounded High ï i ü u Mid ë e ö o Low ä a

3.3 Tone system

Many languages of the world are tone languages. A tone is a linguistic feature in which the pitch modulation affects the pronunciation of a syllable or word and causes a difference in meaning or a difference in the grammatical or syntactic relationship of the syllable or word. Tone languages can be classified into two classes depending on the shape of their “pitch phonemes.” These are: register tone languages and contour tone languages. In register tone languages, tonal contrasts contain different levels, e.g. mid tone, high tone, and low tone. This is a process in which tones neither rise nor fall. Contour tone languages are not described in terms of levels but according to whether the tones rise, fall, or rise and fall, in pitch. Since all tones occur at one of three levels, Viri is classified as a register tone language. If a contour tone occurs in a word it is composed of two different tones, and there are also two vowels. In Viri, there are three tone levels, namely, high (H), low (L) and mid (M). The mid tone in Viri is often left unmarked. The lexical items in example (7) contrast with each other. The contrasts among the three tones distinguish the word meanings as specified above. Diacritics used in the orthography of the language are interpreted below:

(7) [ ]́ high tone e.g. gbɪ́ in [ ]̀ low tone e.g. gbɪ̀ to beat [ ] mid tone e.g. gbi pumpkin

The modulation of tones in example (8) distinguishes the lexical differences between the morphemes (a) and (b), as well as the grammatical differences in (c) and (d). This illustrates that Viri tone has both grammatical and lexical functions.

(8) a. yɛlɛ to tie with a rope b. yɛ́lɛ́ to move slowly and quietly c. yɛ́lɛ̀ cold d. yɛ̀lɛ̀ to cool

Marking the tense in a verb is another grammatical function of tones, e.g. the verb /ká/ ‘is’ usually changes to the past tense /kà/ ‘was’ by changing the tone from H to L.

Table 3.8. The orthographic symbols used for tones

Tone Orthographic Symbol High (H) ´ Mid (M) Low (L) ̃

3.4 Syllable structures

Clements describes a syllable as any combination of consonants and vowels: Consonants and vowels are organized into syllables …, and syllables into a hierarchy of larger prosodic categories such as the phonological word, the phonological phrase, the intonational phrase and the utterance.” (2000:139)

Richards, Platt, and Platt (1992) explain how vowels and consonants combine to form a syllable: In phonology, the syllable is defined by the way in which vowels and consonants combine to form various sequences. Vowels can form a syllable on their own or they can be the “centre” of a syllable…. Consonants are at the beginning or the end of syllables and, with a few exceptions, do not usually form syllables on their own. Syllables may be classified according to whether they end in a vowel (open syllables) or in a consonant (closed syllables) .... A syllable can be divided into three parts:…the onset, the nucleus or peak,… the coda. In the English word bed, /bed/, /b/ would be the onset, /e/ the nucleus, and /d/ the coda. (Richards et al. 1992:367) In Viri, syllable structures are primarily open syllables. A syllable is “open” when it ends in a vowel. A “closed” syllable is one that ends in a consonant. The only closed syllables in Viri end in nasal and liquid consonants; that is, nasal consonants /m n ŋ/ and liquids /l r/ are found in coda positions because they are soft. These sounds are regarded as having lost their final vowels. In fact, one could argue that there are contrastive nasal vowels, in order to keep all syllables as open as possible. However, since there is a contrast between [m], [n], [ŋ] word finally, there is enough cause to allow for a very restricted CVN syllable and CV /l r/ syllable structure. Thus we turn to discuss open syllables followed by a discussion of closed syllables In example (9), all the words are monosyllables. The list starts with a V syllable and ends with a simple and complex onset of CV syllables. The co-articulated sounds are considered as one consonant in (c).

(9) a. a V it is b. bà CV house c. ŋgɔ CV water

Consider examples where two vowels occur in final position, as in (10). Also in example (10), the structures CV.V show that there is probably a loss of a consonant before the final vowel in each case. To provide evidence for this claim, consider the examples in (11) from Ndogo where consonants are lost, but are still maintained in Viri.

(10) a. ndɔɔ̀ CV.V year b. ŋgʊ́ʊ̀ CV.V tree c. duù CV.V rock d. wiì CV.V child e. gbáà CV.V boat

In example 11, all the syllables have the structure CV.CV in Viri, but CV.V in Ndogo. They claim that consonants were maintained in the past like Viri do, but modern Ndogo prefer to remove them between vowels. (Rebigo and Mama, P.C.)

Viri Ndogo (11) a. kpɔ́rɔ̀ CV.CV kpɔ́ɔ̀ CV.V drum b. vɔ́rɔ̀ CV.CV vɔ́ɔ̀ CV.V dog c. mʊrʊ CV.CV mʊ́ʊ̀ CV.V head d. mɔ́lɔ̀ CV.CV mɔ́ɔ̀ CV.V leopard e. kárà CV.CV káà CV.V hoe

The other type of syllable structure is that which ends with nasal consonants /m,n,ŋ/ or liquid consonants /l,r/.

(12) a. màŋ(ì) CVN wash b. sàn(ì) CVN poverty, poor c. lèm(ì) CVN sweet d. sol(o) CVl a sack e. gbar(a) CVr to spread to dry

Another type of syllable structure contains vowels in the initial position. These vowels designate human names, /á/ proper names for (human) females, and /ʊ́ / for (human) males, as in example (13).

(13) a. ákʊ V.CV Aku b. ʊ́kʊ V.CV Uku c. ágàlɪ V.CV Agali d. ʊ́gàlɪ V.CV Ugali

The prefixes á and ʊ́ are in agreement with abstract nouns meaning ‘death or sickness’ in (a) and (b), and ‘daytime’ in (c) and (d). Note that the same vowels can be applied to name animals, but these vowels in this class do not distinguish the male and female genders. The names are absolutely neutral, as in example (14).

(14) a. ʊ́tònì V.CV.CV hyena (loan from Bor) b. ʊ́kùkí V.CV.CV a type of fish (loan from Bor) c. álímgbá V.CV.CV kite d. ùlurù V.CV.CV a kind of small animal

The final vowels in speech are deliberately omitted by some speakers. This again confirms the hypothesis suggested earlier.

3.5 Conclusion

In this chapter, we have provided an overview of the phonology of Viri, which includes the twenty- nine phonetic consonants that have been reduced to twenty-four consonant phonemes. There are ten vowels which are divided into two sets, A and B. Set A contains [+ATR] and set B contains [–ATR] vowels. The two sets, A and B, were used to indicate harmonization. Also there are three tone levels in the language, that is, high, mid, and low. The mid tone level is usually left unmarked. The diaresis is an orthographic symbol used to indicate the [+ATR] value. Syllable structures on the other hand, vary from V, CV, CVN, CVL, and CV.CV to V.CV. The prenasalized consonants in a syllable are considered as one sound pronounced together. There are no syllabic consonants in the language. The consonants suspected to have lost their final vowels may be /m, n, ŋ/ and /l, r/.

Chapter 4 Prenominal Modifiers in Viri

4.0 Introduction

The prenominal noun phrase structure in Viri usually contains one obligatory constituent that serves as a head noun. This head noun may be preceded by one or more optional constituents that describe or modify the head noun. The optional constituents may be descriptive adjectives, which include adjectives of quality, size, shape, sensation, speed, texture, property, age and colour, or may be determiners, which include indefinite and definite quantifiers, including numbers. In this chapter, we will discuss prenominal noun phrases, beginning with the plural forms of modifiers and their head nouns in the constructions, marked and unmarked structures, nouns and uncountable appositionals. We will also provide the order of the constituents in the prenominal noun phrase below. The formula follows the patterns of Ubangi languages: NP → (Quan)(Num)(Adj)N. Table 4.1 will be presented as a conclusion.

4.1 Plurals

The word “plural” is a grammatical concept which may be thought of as ‘more than one’ in number, so the formation of plurals may differ from language to language. It may be formed by adding a morpheme as a prefix to the adjective or to the noun, as in Viri, or it may be formed by adding a suffix to the noun, as in English. In other languages, plurals are formed by phonological changes to phonemes within the lexical item. In this section, we will look at different ways in which plurals are formed in Viri.

4.1.1 The plural of nouns

Nouns are either countable or uncountable. “Countable nouns usually have both singular and plural number. In contrast, uncountable nouns are neither singular nor plural in number.” (Eastwood 1994:179). In Viri, countable nouns are pluralized (as a general principle) by the addition of the plural marker as a prefix to the noun in question, as in examples (15) and (16).

Singular Plural (15) a. vórõ b. ká-vórõ dog PL-dog ‘a dog’ ‘dogs’’

(16) a. 'borõ b. ká-'borõ porcupine PL-porcupines ‘a porcupine’ ‘porcupines’

Some nouns have irregular plurals in Viri. Consider example (17).

Singular Plural (17) a. wu'dũ b. nako ‘person’ ‘persons/people’

The plural noun in (17b) is formed without ká which is less formal, but it is frequently used with ká. That is the repluralization of the irregular plural noun nako which increases the number of the people, as in example (18).

(18) a. ká+nako b. ká-nako PL+people PL-people ‘many kinds of people’

27 28

4.1.2 The plural of adjectives

As shown in the examples for plural nouns above, ká is used to mark the plural nouns. So we add ká, the plural marker, before adjectives to form their plurals. See example in (19) and (21).

Singular Plural (19) a. yivi tãmã b. ká-yivi tãmã good shoe PL-good shoe ‘a good shoe’ ‘good shoes’

(20) a. fítí ngúũ b. nvírí ngúũ small tree small trees

The irregular plural adjective in (20b) can take ká as a grammatical feature for marking the plural, as in example (21).

(21) a. nvírí ngúũ b. ká-nvírí ngúũ small trees PL-small trees ‘many kinds of small trees’

4.1.3 Reduplication of the plural adjectives

Some adjectives in Viri make their plurals by reduplicating the root word. The reduplication has two varieties: regular reduplication and irregular reduplication. In (22b), the first part of the reduplication assumes the adverbial degree preceding the adjective in the adjective phrase. The first part of the reduplication normally drops out the original low tone and acquires mid tone instead. This process is important for creating a modifier for an adjective in the noun phrase construction.

Singular Plural (22) a. nzã ngúũ b. nza-nzã ngúũ long tree long-long tree ‘a tall tree’ ‘very long trees’

The two types of reduplication can be further pluralized by the addition of the plural marker ká as a prefix in each case, as in example (23).

Singular Plural (23) a. nza-nzã ngúũ b. ká-nza-nzã ngúũ long-long tree PL-long-long tree ‘a very tall tree’ ‘very tall trees’

Some adjectives have irregular plurals which have no phonological relation at all, as in example (24). The process of reduplication is regular. In example (24), there is no possible explanation as to why the lexical changes have taken place between the singular and plural. The term used for this difference is “suppletion.” This reduplication of the plural adjective form is a phonological process which is to be discussed in future research on phonology.

Singular Plural (irregular) (24) a. gã kḯ b. kpo-kpõ kḯ big breast big-big breast ‘a big breast’ ‘very big breasts’

As mentioned earlier, the reduplicated plural adjective can take ká as the plural prefix which emphasizes the plurality of the adjective. Consider example (25).

(25) a. kpo-kpõ kḯ b. ká-kpo-kpõ kḯ big-big breasts PL-big-big breasts ‘very big breasts’ ‘very big breasts’

Some irregular plurals of adjectives can be reduplicated to form another plural as in example (26) where the singular is fítí.

(26) a. nvírí kárã b. nvinvírí kárã small hoes very.small hoes

Note that the formation of the plurals of irregular or regular reduplicated adjectives can occur only with adjectives marked with low tones or high tones. Adjectives with mid tones are excluded from the reduplication process. We will now look at the formation of marked and unmarked constituents in noun phrase constructions.

4.1.4 Plural markers in the noun phrase

In this section we look at how plural markers are used in Viri noun phrases. The formation of plural adjectives and nouns will reveal how plurality is marked in these structures. In examples (27a) and (27b), both nouns and adjectives in each case contain plural markers. Note that the noun in (27b) is an inanimate noun instead of the animate noun in (27a). In example (27c), you will find that the noun in the construction is marked with the plural marker while the adjective is not marked. However, it would be ungrammatical to produce a construction with the plural marker on the adjective while the noun is not marked, as in (27d).

(27) a. ká-vanga ká-wiĩ PL-nice PL-child ‘nice children’ b. ká-vanga ká-võngú PL-nice PL-clothes ‘nice clothes’ c. vanga ká-wiĩ nice PL-child ‘nice children’ d. * ká-vanga wiĩ PL-nice PL.child ‘nice children’

In example (28a) and (28b), both the adjective and the noun are marked, that is the adjective and the noun are preceded by the plural marker. Note the reduplication in (28b). In (28c) it is correct to keep the adjective and noun unmarked; it is still the unmarked noun that conveys the grammatical correctness of the structure as well as the semantics. In fact, in (28d) it is only the noun that is marked and the adjective is not, but the construction is grammatical. Example (28e) is actually ungrammatical because of the adjective, which is marked while the noun is not.

(28) a. ká-gäm̃ är̃ ä ̃ ká-daḱ õ PL-old PL-man ‘old men’

b. ká-gämärä-gäm̃ är̃ ä ̃ ká-daḱ õ PL-old-old PL-man ‘very old men’

c. gäm̃ är̃ ä ̃ daḱ õ old man ‘an old man’

d. gäm̃ är̃ ä ̃ ká-daḱ õ old.ADJ PL-man ‘old men’

e. * ká-gäm̃ är̃ ä ̃ daḱ õ PL-old man

We will now look at descriptive adjectives in noun phrase structures, that is, how they occur or co-occur in their modifying parameters.

4.2 Descriptive Adjectives

Adjective phrases in Viri contain an adverb of degree which precedes the adjective in the noun phrase, as in example (29):

(29) 'Bḯï ̃ kere gämärä 'dakõ ká kãsáa. a.INDF very.ADV old.ADJ man be there.LOC ‘A very old man is there.’

The descriptive adjectives in the prenominal noun phrase, as mentioned by Payne, contain the properties of quality (good, bad), size (big, little, tall, short), shape (round, square, rectangular), physical properties (heavy, hard, smooth), sensation (sweet, sour, bitter), speed (fast, slow, quick), colour (black, white, red), and age (old, young, new). (Payne 1997:63). Although Payne has presented a long list of descriptive adjectives in the way they are used, it should be noted that not all of them can be used in a single noun phrase structure. In Viri the possible number of adjectives or modifiers may range from one to five, but one to three is more common. We will examine all the descriptive adjectives in Viri according to their place of occurrence within simple clause constructions.

4.2.1 Adjectives of quality

The adjectives of quality in Viri usually come before the head noun in the noun phrase construction. In examples (30) through (38) the syntactic relationships between adjectives and the nouns they describe are shown. That is, more than one adjective can be used before a noun. In example (30), both adjective and noun are not marked, that is neither the adjective nor the noun is preceded by the plural marker.

(30) a. Yoro kpõkõrõ wu'dũ kõno. Send.IMP important person here.LOC ‘Send an important person here.’

b. Yoro yiyi ngú vẽtẽrẽ võngú ze. send.IMP nice.ADJ new.ADJ black cloth to.me. ‘Send a nice new black cloth to me.’

See also table 4.1 at the end of this chapter.

4.2.2 Adjectives of size

Adjectives of size come before the head but after adjectives of quality in the noun phrase construction. Example (31a) has a singular adjective and singular noun, and both are unmarked in the noun phrase structure. In (31b) both adjective and noun are not marked by the plural marker ká, although the adjective and noun are already pluralized without employing the plural marker.

(31) a. 'bã ndõ wó wu'dũ sáa. See short.ADJ white.ADJ person.N that-LOC.DEM.ADJ ‘See that short person.’ b. 'bã ndondõ wó nako sáa. See short.short white people that ‘See those very short and white people.’

4.2.3 Adjectives of shape

Adjectives of shape, like other descriptive adjectives, can come before the nouns which they modify, but after adjectives of quality and size, as in example (32).

(32) a. Úfõ ngõ vanga ndïng̃ ïl̃ ï ̃ títı̃ kí. name.Prop built good round hut PRF ‘Ufo has built a round hut.’ b. Úfõ ngõ ndïnngïlïndïng̃ ïl̃ ï ̃ ká-tií kí. Ufo built very.round PL-hut PRF ‘Ufo has built very round huts.’

4.2.4 Adjectives of property

Adjectives of physical properties come before the head noun but after adjectives of size and shape. In example (33), the texture or physical appearance of the body is being described by the prenominal or attributive adjective. As we said before, the low tone syllables are subject to the reduplicated plural, and can take the plural marker ká as in preceding examples.

(33) Kpẽkẽrẽ dĩrĩ ma võ. rough.ADJ body be bad ‘A rough body is bad.’

4.2.5 Adjectives of sensation

Adjectives of sensation come before the noun that they describe in the noun phrase, but after adjectives of size, property or shape, as in example (34). As mentioned earlier, an adjective with mid tone does not form the plural by reduplication. Such an adjective normally takes the plural marker ká as a prefix to both the adjective and the noun.

(34) a. Úfõ zã yivi lẽmĩ nzá kí. name-PROP eat nice sweet food PRF ‘Ufo has eaten nice sweet food.’

4.2.6 Adjectives of speed

Adjectives of speed appear before the noun, but after adjectives of sensation, property or shape, in the construction of the noun phrase in Viri. By fronting the adjective in example (35), the speed of the subject noun is emphasized.

(35) Kõwe nanze gbǘü̃ nó áfoyo. quick.ADJ animal forest be hare ‘A quick forest animal is the hare.’

4.2.7 Adjectives of age

Adjectives of age in Viri occur before their head nouns, and before adjectives of color.

(36) Gäm̃ är̃ ä ̃ wó vórõ logïr̃ ï.̃ old.ADJ white dog on.road.PP ‘An old white dog is on the road.’

4.2.8 Adjectives of colour

Adjectives of color usually come immediately before the nouns that they modify, as in example (23). In example (37a) and (37b), each adjective of colour contains one low tone spreading onto each syllable in the unmarked form.

(37) a. Gã vẽtẽrẽ kökö ma yivi. big.ADJ black.ADJ cock be good ‘A big black cock is good.’

b. Fítí nvãrãkpã tãmã ndë nó gbí tiĩ. small.ADJ red.ADJ shoe of.1SG be in.P hut ‘My small red shoe is in the hut.’

Adjectives of description can be used also to express the increasing or decreasing size of the body, and the physical appearance of some parts of the body. This is usually done by the change in tones from low to high low, with the intention to abuse or to annoy someone, as in example (38). Example (38a) describes the physical appearance of the eyeball as red, that is, with blood running in it, while (38b) has a change of meaning brought about by the change in tones which are H H L. It means that the colour of the eyeballs is very red with too much colour of blood in them. Such an expression surely is an insult to the addressee, and will cause him to fight the speaker or to be angry with him.

(38) a. ŋo ta nvãrãkpã volo-ŋo na 2SG with red-ADJ ball.eye-2SG REF ‘you with your red eyeball’

b. ŋo ta nvárákpã volo-ŋo na 2SG with reddish.ADJ ball.eye-2SG REF ‘you with your reddish eyeball’

4.3 Prenominal determiners

Determiners come at the beginning of the NP before the descriptive adjectives. In English, the word “determiner” includes: • the articles “a/an” and “the;” • the demonstrative determiners “this/these” and “that/those;” • quantifier determiners such as the indefinite quantifier determiners “each,” “some,” “every,” “any,” “all” and “many;” • number determiners such as “first”, “second”, “one”, “two” and “three;” • the possessive determiners “my”, “our”, “your”, “his”, “her” and “their;” and • the Wh- determiners “whose”, “what” and “which.”

In this section we will concern ourselves with prenominal determiners in noun phrases. Some other determiners will be described in the postnominal noun phrase in the next chapter. We will begin our discussion with the number determiners.

4.3.1 Number determiners

In this section we will examine the number determiners in Viri by looking at the ordinal numbers. The ordinals occur with animate objects (persons, animals, body parts, etc.). Notice that the words for ‘first’ kǘköñ ï,̃ ‘second’ nvegbindi kǘköñ ï,̃ and ‘last’ sükü̃ come before the head noun. The postnominal ordinal numbers will be dealt with in chapter five. Consider the examples of prenominal ordinal numbers in the Viri noun phrases in example (39). It should be noted that the expression nvegbíndi kǘköñ ï ̃ in (39b) is an idiom that literally means ‘one in of first’, and translated freely means ‘the one who comes after the first’. In fact, the whole syntactic structure forms the ordinal number taken to mean ‘second’ before the noun wiĩ ‘child’. It forms the noun phrase which precedes the head noun wiĩ ‘child’.

(39) a. Kǘköñ ï ̃ wiĩ nó nõo. first child be this.DEM ‘This is the first child.’

b. Nvegbí-ndi kǘköñ ï ̃ wiĩ nó nõo. one.in-of first child be this.DEM one.coming.after first child be this.DEM ‘This is the second child.’

c. Sükü wiĩ nó nõo. last child be the.DEM ‘This is the last child.’

4.3.2 Indefinite quantifier determiners

Indefinite quantifiers in Viri come at the very beginning of the NP. The indefinite quantifiers, namely the words for ‘many’ köt́ ḯ and ‘much’ kpũmgbũ, are shown in examples (40)–(42). Note that in (40a) the noun phrase köt́ ḯ nako ‘many people’ indicates the plurality of both the quantifier determiner and its plural head noun, since this indefinite quantifier normally goes with a plural countable noun. So this noun phrase structure shows that there are many people of the same kind found in one place. On the other hand, in (40b) both the quantifier determiner and its head noun are marked by the plural marker to indicate many different kinds of people.

(40) a. Ndí nó köt́ ḯ nako. 3PL.SBJ be many people ‘They are many people.’

b. Ndí nó ká-köt́ ḯ ká-nako. They are PL-many PL-people ‘They are many different kinds of people.’

The word kpũmgbũ occurs with an uncountable noun like ‘hair’ or ‘grass’ as in (41). It cannot take the plural marker ká because both the quantifier and the head noun are uncountable. Although it is not a good sentence in Viri, example (42) demonstrates what such a sentence would look like.

(41) Kpũmgbũ semuru ma ŋó. much hair be nice ‘Much hair is nice.’

Although kpũmgbũ ‘much’ is an indefinite quantifier, it cannot be used to describe the amount of an uncountable noun such as ‘water’. Instead, gã, which means ‘big, large, much’ can be used to describe the quantity of ‘hair’ or ‘grass’ or ‘water’. See example (42).

(42) a. gã ngo gbí kálã much water in pot ‘much water in a pot’

b. gã semuru ma ŋó much hair is nice ‘Much hair is nice.’

Another quantifier in Viri is the word gbẽle which has several meanings, of which some are definite and others indefinite. Definite meanings include ‘only’, ‘one’, ‘single’, and the indefinite meanings include ‘each’, ‘every’. We will deal with the indefinite meanings first, and the definite meanings later. Consider examples (43) and (44). The expression in example (43) implies that the speaker checked each person in turn and found each person was carrying a gun.

(43) Gbẽle wu'dũ gbí ta na á'böö̃ nó vǘndü̃. each person in place that with.him be gun ‘Each person in that place has a gun.’

In example (44), the definite meaning of the quantifier gbẽle depends on the contents of each sentence. In (45a) the speaker requires the hearer to give only a single mango to his brother. This one may be picked from several mangoes. In (44b) gbẽle means ‘only’. There is no man other than Ufo found in that place, or it may imply the peculiar character of Ufo. That is to say, Ufo may be a serious or fearless or important person from among many other men, or he is the only man and the rest are women. In (44c) the meaning of the quantifier is different from those meanings found in (44a) and (44b). Here it means the speaker does the work which is similar to the work others do, that is, the work which is not different from others' work.

(44) a. Ze gbẽle mángã na zi wána ŋo. give.IMP single mango that to brother you ‘Give that single mango to your brother.’

b. Ufo nó gbẽle 'dakõ gbí ta na. PROP.name be only man in.P place that ‘Ufo is the only man in that place.’

c. 'Duũ tí ma nó gbẽle ndẽ. we are do.PROG be same work ‘We are doing the same work.’

In example (45) we look at another quantifier, namely légéré ‘only’. Note that although the quantifiers gbéle and légéré are different, they both mean ‘only’ in (44b) and (45).

(45) Légéré võngú 'bëë̃ nó nõo. only cloth hand.1PSR be this.DEM ‘My only clothing is this.’

Note also that the full form of légéré is not commonly used nowadays. Instead, there is a contraction of the first two syllables leaving only that part which is usually used in combination with the intensifier ká. In example (46), the phrase káré ní limits the number to only one, that is, nobody else other than him.

(46) Ne 'de káré ní. 1SG find.PAST FOC.only 3SG.DO ‘I found only him.’

There is another kind of quantifier, namely 'bḯï ̃ . It has several meanings when used in different places in the noun phrases. In example (47) we will consider different sentences which will be used as bases for our comparative discussion. Example (47a) simply says, ‘Send some water to me’. In this example, the quantifier 'bḯï ̃ ‘some’ expresses that only part of the uncountable noun ngo ‘water’ is requested. In (47b), the plural of 'bḯï ̃ is used with a plural noun. The meaning is still indefinite, but translates as ‘some’ because of the ká added. The word 'bḯï ̃ also may mean ‘another’. In Viri, it is used with a singular noun to express an extra quantity or an extra number of an object, as in (47c). Here the speaker requires one extra knife in addition to the one which he already has but it is not sharp.

(47) a. Yoro 'bḯï ̃ ngo ze. send.IMP some water.DO to.1sg.IDO ‘Send some water to me.’

b. Yoro ká-'bḯï ̃ ká-nvã ze. send.IMP PL.some PL.knife.DO to.me.IDO ‘Send some knives to me.’

c. Yoro 'bḯï ̃ nvá ze. ŋõno ma nzí gbá. send another knife to.me. this.one be sharp NEG ‘Send another knife to me. This one is not sharp.’

Changes in word order for ‘bii result in important differences. In (48a) and (48b) the ‘bii comes before the adjective and indicate a single child while in 49 c and d the adjective ‘bii order signals more specificity, that of only.

(48) a. Yoro 'bḯï ̃ gbẽle wiĩ ze. send.IMP INDEF single child.DO to.me.IDO ‘Send a single child to me.’

b. Yoro 'bḯï ̃ légéré wiĩ ze. send.IMP INDEF only child.DO to.me.IDO ‘Send an only child to me.’

c. Yoro gbẽle 'bḯï ̃ wiĩ ze. send.IMP only.DEF SPEC child.DO to.me.IDO ‘Send only a child to me.’

d. Yoro légéré 'bḯï ̃ wiĩ ze. send.IMP only.DET SPEC child.DO to.me.IDO ‘Send only a child to me.’

There are further possibilities in which these quantifying determiners can be used in a single syntactic structure before a noun in a noun phrase, and when they are used in different places the semantic complexities arise that need more work to be done in order to untangle the issues in question. Thus, because I do not have time to do all these things now, I am forced to put it aside for future work. We now turn to look at the appositional noun phrase.

4.4 Appositional noun phrase

The appositional noun phrase in Viri consists of an obligatory head noun and an apposed noun phrase with a pause between them. Each noun constituent may include a single noun, a compound noun, a possessive noun phrase, or a coordinated noun phrase where each refers to the same entity. All noun phrases in the appositional constructions are characterized as having the same status. According to Quirk and Greenbaum, apposition resembles coordination in linking units having grammatical affinity and for units to be appositives, they must normally be identical in reference or else the referent must be included in the reference of the other. (Quirk and Greenbaum 1975:276). Therefore, the Viri appositional noun phrase pattern is as follows: Appositive NP → NP NP The structure of the appositive NP in Viri is similar to that of English as well as some of the Niger-Congo languages of Africa. In example (49a), the appositional noun phrase is formed by the combination of a relative pronoun and a noun, which are in apposition to the proper noun, Úfõ. As we see in (49b), the last two compound nouns are modified and they are in apposition with the first noun. The two modified nouns and the noun phrase at the beginning of the construction refer to the same animal. In (49c) the initial noun and the kinship noun refer to the same entity, that is, the possessed one which precedes the possessor.

(49) a. Úfõ, nvedo lu kí. PROP.name who.master.lie arrive.PAST PRF ‘Ufo, a liar, has arrived.’

b. mgbémgbé, võ nanze ngo

crocodile.NP bad.ADJ animal water.N ‘crocodile, a bad water animal’

c. Adũ, wánã-a ma ŋó. PROP.name brother.my.PSR be good.ADJ.COMPL ‘Adu, my brother, is good.’

Table 4.1 Determiners and descriptive adjectives in prenominal noun phrases in Viri

4.5 Summary

In this chapter, the prenominal noun phrase in Viri has been divided into sections, each describing certain aspects of the language. Thus we will conclude the discussion of the prenominal noun phrases by presenting table 4.1, which shows all the slots and the prenominal contents in Viri. We now move to the postnominal modifiers in chapter five.

Chapter 5 Postnominal Modifiers in Viri

5.0 Introduction

In Viri, the process of postmodification is expounded by means of adding various kinds of modifiers to the basic noun phase. In this chapter we will describe and analyse the different kinds of word order. The order of the constituents follows the patterns that are to be found in many languages of the Niger-Congo family:

NP → N (Poss)(Dem)(Ref)(Quan)(Inter)(Rel)(PP)

5.1 Possessive pronouns

The concept of possession in Viri is expressed in two ways. One way is by using personal possessor pronouns with inalienable nouns, which include body parts or kinship terms. The other possessive construction places the possessed item before the possessor. Before we involve ourselves in this discussion, note tables 5.1 and 5.2. Table 5.1 contains independent pronouns (both singular and plural forms). The plural forms of pronouns can be used as possessors. Table 5.2 contains the possessive pronouns which are used as suffixes attached to the nouns they modify.

Table 5.1 Independent pronouns Person Singular Plural 1 ne I/me 'duũ we/us (excl) ndã we/us (incl. dual) 'dandã we/us (incl. pl.) 2 ŋo you 'da you 3 ní he/she/it ndí they

Table 5.2 Possessive pronoun possessor Person Singular Plural 1 -e/-ë my -'duũ our (excl) -ndã our (incl. dual) -'dandã our (incl. pl) 2 -ŋo/-ŋö your -'da your 3 -o/-ö his/her/its -ndí their -u/-ü

In table 5.2 it should be noted that the vowels are subject to vowel harmony with regard to the [ATR] value of the possessed noun, that is to say, when the dominant [+ATR] is on the noun, the suffix becomes [+ATR]. The plural forms of the possessive pronouns are the same forms found in the independent pronouns and are not subject to [+ATR] harmony, indicating they are probably separate words or harmony is blocked by the consonant. The first person plural pronouns have three forms: the exclusive 'duũ ‘our’, the inclusive dual ndã ‘our’ and the inclusive 'dandã ‘our’. The third form is obtained by adding a prefix 'da to ndã. The plural form for the second person is 'da ‘your’, and the third person plural form is ndí ‘their’.

5.1.1 Inalienable possession

Some speakers use a Possessed + Possessor construction, in which the possessor is a singular form of the independent pronoun. This is the full, or basic form. Both the full independent pronoun and a reduced form can be used. The full form provides more emphasis while the reduced form is more

38 39 common. The reduced form involves the omission of the initial nasal and then some vowel changes when two vowels come together. The comparison will certainly let us deduce the cause of change and the reason for change in forms. We begin our discussion with the relative word order of the Possessed + Possessor in inalienable possession.

Basic Form Reduced Form Commonly Used (50) a. 1SG i. lo ne l-e eye 1SG.PSR Eye-my.1SG.PSR ‘my eye’ ‘my eye’

ii. 'bï ̃ ne 'bë-̃ ë hand 1SG.PSR Hand-my.1SG.PSR ‘my hand’ ‘my hand’

iii. mǘ ne më-́ ë buttock 1sg.psr buttock 1SG.PSR ‘my buttock’ ‘my buttock’

b. 2SG i. lo ŋo lo ŋ(o) eye 2SG.PSR eye 2SG.PSR ‘your eye’ ‘your eye’

ii. tï ̃ ŋö tï ̃ ŋ(ö) tooth 2SG.PSR tooth 2SG.PSR ‘your tooth’ ‘your tooth’

iii. mẽ ŋo mẽ ŋ(o) tongue 2SG.PSR tongue 2SG.PSR ‘your tongue’ ‘your tongue’

c. 3SG i. lo ní lo-ó/lo-í eye 3SG.PSR eye-3SG.PSR.PERSONAL/eye-3SG.PSR.IMPERSONAL ‘his/her eye’ ‘its eye’

ii. mẽ ní mẽ-i/ mẽ-u tongue 3SG.PSR tongue-3SG.PSR ‘his/her tongue’ ‘his/her tongue’

iii. mǘ ní mö-́ ö/ mǘ-i buttock 3 SG.PSR buttock-3SG.PSR.PERSONAL/buttock-3SG.PSR.IMPERSONAL ‘his/her buttock’ ‘its buttock’

Note that the singular forms of the independent pronoun that comes after the possessed head noun serve as the possessor in example (50). The independent pronoun actually intensifies or focuses on the possessor rather than the possessed head noun in each construction. But the normal or unfocused construction just takes the vowel of the singular pronouns as the suffix, since the nasal consonant ‘n’ does not intervene. Thus there may be two processes in this situation. The first process may be that the vowel of the head noun assimilates to the vowel of the possessive suffix with value change (i.e., [+ATR] changes [– ATR] value of suffix to [+ATR] suffix). The second process may be that the [ATR] value of the suffix harmonizes with the [ATR] value of the root vowel. The suffix -ŋo may be the only possessive pronoun suffix which does not assimilate to the root vowel because the vowel is often dropped.

The process whereby the high front unrounded vowel ‘i’ in the independent pronoun ní (i.e. in 3SG) can assimilate to the back rounded vowel ‘-ö/-ü/-o/-u’ and the total change of ‘u+i’ to ‘o+o’ is actually a phonological change which needs more explanation in future research, since this is not a phonological thesis. We will consider a possessed noun as an example to represent all the possessed nouns used in example (50). The concept of the plural of the possessed-possessors construction is shown in example (51). In example (51), there is no complication or complex situation as in example (50), where some possessed nouns have [+ATR] values that have assimilated the [–ATR] value of the possessor to a [+ATR] value. There is, however, vowel harmony in each case because both the possessed noun and the possessor have [–ATR] values.

(51) a. 1PL.EXCL lo-'duũ our eyes 1PL.INCL.DUAL lo-ndã our eyes 1PL.INCL lo-'dandã our eyes

b. 2PL lo-'da your eyes

c. 3PL lo-ndí their eyes

Example (52) is a representative sampling of Viri kinship nouns. The kinship nouns for ‘father’, ‘mother’, ‘brother’, ‘sister’, and ‘child’ carry mid and low tones in their final long vowels.

Singular English Plural (52) a. vuũ father kávuũ b. naã mother kánaã c. wánaã brother káwánaã d. zánaã sister kázánaã e. windí vuũ father's brother káwindí vuũ f. windí naã mother's sister káwindí naã g. nü̃kü̃ mother's brother kánü̃kü̃ h. léu father's sister káléu i. wiĩ child káwiĩ j. wi'dakõ son, boy káwi'dakõ k. wïlḯï ̃ daughter, girl káwïlḯï ̃

In example (52), the words for the father’s brother and mother’s sister are in genitive phrases while the words for mother’s brother and father’s sister are lexical terms. Example (53) illustrates how focused possession using independent pronouns is constructed. The commonly used forms with the regular set of possessed pronouns are presented. Because of the common usage of ‘my father’, ‘my mother’, ‘my brother’, ‘my sister’, these terms have undergone a different process than is usually found in possessive constructions. First, there is a reduplication and vowel change from vu ne to vãa or vãvá. The same thing happens in na ne as it becomes nãa or nãná. After the vowel and reduplication, there is a lenis feature that would delete the intervening consonant. A similar process happens with wána ne in that the vowels merge, usually to a vowel, tones change, and the intervening n of the possessive pronoun is deleted. The tone changes are certainly influencing the outcome, but that is not within the scope of this chapter.

Full Form English Common Form (53) a. vu ne my father vãa or vãvá b. na ne my mother nãa or nãná c. wána ne my brother wánãa d. zána ne my sister zánãa

There is also another form of possessed-possessor construction in which there are two possessed head nouns which associate themselves before the possessor pronouns. Consider example (54) and its modified form in example (55).

(54) wána vu ne brother father 1SG ‘my father's brother’

It is also possible to construct the two associative head nouns before the possessor pronoun which has no n intervention, as in example (55).

(55) a. wána vã-a brother father-1SG ‘my father's brother’

b. wána vã-vá brother father-1SG ‘my father's brother’

We will also look at different forms of the plural morpheme of the first person possessive pronoun expressed in example (56).

(56) Exclusive Plural Inclusive Plural Inclusive Dual a. vu-'duũ b. vu-'dandã c. vu-ndã father-we/us father-we/us father-we/us ‘our father’ ‘our father’ ‘our father’

In example (56) each form of the plural morpheme of the first person is quite different from others. They are just like the independent personal plural pronouns, as shown in table 5.1. The same form can be used for various grammatical functions without any change of [ATR] value. We also can use two associated nouns preceding the possessor pronoun. Example (57) illustrates the point.

(57) a. wána vu-'duũ brother father-we/us ‘our father's brother’

b. káwána vu-'duũ PL.brother father-we/us ‘our father's brothers’

c. káwána kávu-'duũ PL.brother PL.father-we/us ‘our fathers' brothers’

Note that in example (58a) ‘our father’ has only ‘one brother’ and the whole noun phrase is unmarked. In (57b) the plural morpheme is introduced as a prefix on the word wána ‘brother’. Here, in this case, it is only ‘brother’ which is pluralized while vu ‘father’ is not pluralized, that is, one father with several brothers. Finally, both ‘brother’ and ‘father’ are marked with the plural morpheme, namely, several fathers and several brothers. Ká is not employed with the plural possessor pronoun because it is already in plural form. Moreover, we can use the associative construction, using the word wána ‘brother’ before the phrase vãa ‘my father’, as in example (58).

(58) wána vã-a brother father-my ‘my father's brother’

As we have seen in (57b) and (57c), the possessive noun phrases are used with the plural marker in order to form plurals, so the same plural marker can be used with example (58) for its plural form.

There is another way of constructing the possessive. This is done simply by placing noun-noun in juxtaposition without any intervention of the pronoun. This type of possession is quite different from those above in which the possessors are personal pronouns. An instance of this is example (59).

(59) a. 'bï ̃ vḯmḯ hand.PSD monkey.PSR ‘monkey's hand’

b. tï ̃ ya tooth.PSD elephant.PSR ‘elephant’s tusk’

In (59), the two examples show a part-whole relationship in which the possessed noun precedes the possessor noun that behaves as a modifier in the possessive noun phrase. This relationship may be represented by the simple formula as a noun-noun modifiers relationship (i.e. N-M). The same formula can be applied to construct a social possessive relationship between two persons, as between a subordinate and a boss, as in example (60).

(60) a. vũrũ gbiya servant.PSD chief.PSR ‘chief's servant’

b. vakure gbiya friend.PSD chief.PSR ‘chief's friend’

In example (60), the word for ‘chief’ is a postmodifier in each case. As our rule for noun-noun genitive relationship states, the possessive noun phrase comes in possessed-possessor order as shown in table 5.3

Table 5.3. Inalienable possessed-possessor genitive relationship NP

Possessed head noun Possessor noun

'bï ̃ 'dakõ hand man the man's hand

Table 5.3 represents the formula for the construction of the genitive relationships for the inalienable possessed head noun-possessor pronoun relations in Viri. It is also possible to expand the possessed-possessor construction by adding more noun phrases to each so that a long embedding chain of noun phrases is produced, as in example (61).

(61) a. 'bï ̃ wána gbiya hand brother chief ‘chief's brother's hand’

We will now turn to focus our attention to the alienably possessed head noun-possessor which often makes use of the possessive linking marker, ‘of’.

5.1.2 Alienable possession

In alienable possession, the possessor is a pronominal enclitic which is phonologically bound at the end of the possessive preposition particle, ‘of’. A clitic is a morpheme which cannot be pronounced in isolation. When it is bound at the beginning of a word it is called “proclitic” and when it is at the end

43 of a phrase it is called “enclitic.” The genitive particle combines with the pronoun clitic to form an alienably possessed noun. In Viri there are three different variants of the possessive morpheme (or possessive preposition particles), namely ndi, ngã, and wá. These three morphemes in Viri subsume the meaning, ‘of’. The basic form of the combination for the three persons are as follows:

(62) a. 1SG, ndi + ne > ndë 2SG, ndi + ŋo > ndöŋö 3SG, ndi + ní > ndöö ́

Thus, these phonological changes of vowel also occur with the other two particles as in examples (63) and (64).

(63) a. ngã + ne > ngẽe b. ngã + ŋo > ngãŋo c. ngã + ní > ngãu

(64) a. wá + ne > wée b. wá + ŋo > wóŋo c wá + ní > wóo

These three combinations of the particles and pronouns are represented in table 5.4. This will be our working scheme for all singular and plural forms for the three persons. We will use one type of alienable possessed head noun, kítĩ ‘chair’, in our table; namely, the order is alienable noun + possessive preposition + possessive pronoun (possessor).

Table 5.4. Combinations of particles and pronouns ndi ngã wá 1 SG kítĩ ndë kítĩ ngẽe kítĩ wée chair of.1SG chair of.1SG chair of.1SG ‘my chair’ ‘my chair’ ‘my chair’ 2 SG kítĩ ndöŋö kítĩ ngãŋo kítĩ wóŋo chair of.2SG chair of.2SG chair of.2SG ‘your chair’ ‘your chair’ ‘your chair’ 3 SG kítĩ ndöö ́ kítĩ ngãu kítĩ wóó chair of.3SG chair of.3SG chair of.3SG ‘his chair’ ‘his chair’ ‘his chair’ 1 PL kítĩ ndi'duũ kítĩ ngã'duũ kítĩ wá'duũ chair of.1PL.EXCL chair of.1PL.EXCL chair of.1PL.EXCL ‘our chair’ ‘our chair’ ‘our chair’ kítĩ ndindã kítĩ ngãndã kítĩ wándã chair of.1PL.DUAL chair of.1PL.DUAL chair of.1PL.DUAL ‘our chair’ ‘our chair’ ‘our chair’ kítĩ ndi'dandã kítĩ ngã'dandã kítĩ wá'dandã chair of.1PL.INCL chair of.1PL.INCL chair of.1PL.INCL ‘our chair’ ‘our chair’ ‘our chair’ 2 PL kítĩ ndi'da kítĩ ngã'da kítĩ wá'dã chair of-2PL chair of-2PL chair of.2PL ‘your chair’ ‘your chair’ ‘your chair’ 3 PL kítĩ ndindí kítĩ ngãndí kítĩ wándí chair of.3PL chair of.3PL chair of.3PL ‘their chair’ ‘their chair’ ‘their chair’

One should note that there are three prepositions to introduce possession in Viri. These prepositional phrases are normally placed after the alienable noun. As mentioned earlier, the [ATR] harmony affects the first and the third person singular only. There is no change in the vowel of ngã for 2SG because it must be in [ATR] vowel harmony with that of the possessive pronoun. The vowels in the 2SG and 3SG (i.e. ndöŋö, ndöö,́ wóŋo, wóo) are copy vowels. The construction in table 5.5 contains double prepositional phrases which follow the alienable head noun for the purpose of emphasis. The application of two prepositional phrases after the noun in each construction implies that I/we, you/you, he/she/they is the only person who owns the item and no one else. This way of emphatic possession is commonly used by the native speakers of this language. Table 5.5 shows the concept of emphasis, since the meaning of each structure is clearly shown by the emphasis that the object, for example, belongs to me and it is mine but not someone else's. The same meanings can be introduced by the plural constructions as are found in singular constructions. The constructions of the first person plural have the same gloss which say ‘our own chair’. The use of such constructions depends on the choice of the speaker since they mean the same thing. That is why the meaning of each possessive construction may be construed as: ‘my own chair’, ‘his own chair’ etc. In table 5.5 we see that each construction contains repeated possessive words for the purpose of emphasis only, that is, the word ‘own’ is added for emphasis.

Table 5.5 Concept of emphasis on possessor

1SG kítĩ ndë wée kítĩ ndë ngẽe chair of.1SG of.1SG chair of.1SG of.1SG ‘my own chair’ ‘my own chair’ 2SG kítĩ ndöŋö wóŋo kítĩ ndöŋö ngãŋo chair of.2SG of.2SG chair of.2SG of.2SG ‘your own chair’ ‘your own chair’ 3SG kítĩ ndöö ́ wóó kítĩ ndóö ́ ngãu chair of.3SG of.3SG chair of.3SG of.3SG ‘his own chair’ ‘his own chair’ 1 PL kítĩ ndi'duũ wá'duũ kítĩ ndi'duũ ngã'duũ chair of.1PL.EXCL of.1PL.EXCL chair of.1pl.excl of.1pl.excl ‘our own chair’ ‘our own chair’ kítĩ ndindã wándã kítĩ ndindã ngãndã chair of.1PL.DUAL of.1PL.DUAL chair of.PL.DUAL of.1PL.DUAL kítĩ ndi'dandã wá'dandã kítĩ ndindã ngã'dandã chair of.1PL.INCL of.1PL.INCL chair of-1PL.INCL of.1PL.INCL ‘our own chair’ ‘our own chair’ 2 PL kítĩ ndi'da wá'da kítĩ ndi'da ngã'da chair of.2SG of.2SG chair of.2SG of.2SG ‘your own chair’ ‘your own chair’ 3 PL kítĩ ndindí wándí kítĩ ndindí ngãndí chair of.3PL of.3PL chair of.3pl of.3PL ‘their own chair’ ‘their own chair’

5.2 Demonstrative adjectives

Demonstrative adjectives are determiners that are used to modify their nouns. In English the definite determiner or definite article can be used with singular nouns as well as plural nouns, e.g., ‘the boy’ and ‘the boys’. Examples of determiners with nouns are ‘this boy’, ‘that boy’, ‘these boys’ and ‘those boys’. Thus, we can say that demonstratives are just like the definite article in that both are modifiers

45 or determiners or articles. But demonstratives have more features than the word ‘the’ in that “they imply pointing to the entities they refer to”, that is, “they often express distance or orientation with respect to the speaker/hearer” (Payne 1997:102). In addition to the determinative function, the demonstratives may be used also in the place of the entity. Thus they are called demonstrative pronouns. Look at the English sentences in example (65). We have two occurrences of the demonstrative ‘this’. It functions as an adjective in (65a), while in (65b) it is functioning as a pronoun.

(65) a. This boy is tall. b. This is big.

In Viri, the demonstrative adjectives occur only after the head noun that they refer to in the postnominal noun phrase structure. There are two types of demonstrative adjectives in Viri. One type includes free morphemes, such as nõo ‘this’, na ‘that’, sáa ‘that (farther)’ and síni ‘that (farthest)’. The other type includes a bound morpheme to the demonstratives in each case, such as ŋõno ‘this (near)’, ŋãna ‘that (far)’, ŋãnã ‘that (but not within the speaker and hearer's reach)’, ŋãsáa ‘that (farther)’, ŋãsíni ‘that (remote from both hearer and speaker)’. The compound or bound morphemes provide the idea of a choice between two objects or persons in the situation. Therefore, the construction for the demonstrative rule reads: NP → N (Dem) We begin the discussion of the Viri demonstrative adjectives with type one, followed by type two. We will also consider its two functions – adjectival function and pronominal function.

5.2.1 Free demonstrative adjectives

(66) Ze kítĩ nõo. take.IMP chair.N this-DEM ‘Take this chair.’

The object is near to the speaker and away from the hearer, or the speaker and the hearer are both in face-to-face contact.

(67) Ze kítĩ na. take.IMP chair.N that.DEM ‘Take that chair.’

This implies that the object in question is closer to the hearer and a little farther from the speaker.

(68) 'Dĩ ta kítĩ sáa. come.IMP with chair.N that.DEM ‘Bring that chair.’

The object in this case, although far away from both the speaker and the hearer, it is still visible.

(69) 'Dĩ ta kítĩ síni. come.IMP with chair.N that.DEM ‘Bring that chair.’

This means that the object is very far away from both the speaker and the hearer but still the entity can be seen. It should be noted that demonstrative adjectives are all restricted to come only after the nouns they modify. So, any construction which is not in agreement with this rule is considered invalid, such as example (70).

(70) *Ze nõo kítĩ. take.IMP this.DEM chair

If all the demonstrative adjectives are placed before their nouns, then such constructions are considered ill-formed constructions in Viri, as in example (70). Now that we have compared the correct and incorrect forms of the one type of constructions, we will move on to examine the adjectival and the pronominal roles of the other type of demonstratives.

5.2.2 Bound or referential demonstrative adjectives

The second type of demonstrative adjective is formed by adding the low tone morpheme ŋõ as a prefix to the demonstrative nõo ‘this/this one’. Note that there is a little modification in the form on combining these two morphemes together. The mid-vowel tone which is usually left unmarked is deleted from the morpheme nõo and a low tone is transferred onto the prefix. The same thing is found, when ŋã and na are written as the compound word ŋãna ‘that (the object is still visible)’. So, the series of such demonstratives which function to differentiate between two alternative objects when a choice is made is presented in example (71).

(71) a. ŋõno ‘this other (near the speaker)’ b. ŋãna ‘that other (near the speaker)’ c. ŋãsáa ‘that other (far from both the speaker and the hearer)’ d. ŋãsíni ‘that other (very far away from the speaker and the hearer)’ e. ŋãnã ‘that other (which is not visible)’

Note that the above demonstratives come after the head nouns that they modify, as those that have been dealt with in section 5.2.1. Referential demonstrative adjectives can be used to differentiate two objects placed in two different positions, as in example (72). In example (72a), the position of the head noun is near the speaker and the employment of the demonstrative can imply that there is another friend of mine with a different character or behaviour. It is possible that they contrast with the one with opposite meaning, that is, the referential adjective ŋõno ‘this’ refers to my friend who is near to me, the speaker, and who is good. But in example (72b) ŋãna ‘that’ refers to my friend who is far from me, the speaker, and near the hearer. It also implies that besides that friend of mine there is someone else.

(72) a. Vakureé ŋõno ma yivi. friend.1SG this is good ‘This friend of mine is good.’

b. Vakureé ŋãna ma võ. friend.1SG that is bad ‘That friend of mine is bad.’

In example (73), there are two chairs, one near to the speaker, and the other a bit farther away from him. The speaker wants the hearer to get the chair near him (the speaker) rather than that one far away, which might be near the hearer.

(73) Ze kítĩ ŋõno ŋo táã si kítĩ ŋãna. take.IMP chair.N this.DEM you.PRON AUX leave.IMP chair that.DEM ‘Take this chair and leave that other chair.’

We now look at example (74). (74) Zã kóõ ŋõno ŋo táã si kóõ ŋãnã. eat.IMP food.N this.DEM you.PRON Aux leave.IMP food that.DEM ‘Eat this food and leave that other food.’

The speaker in this construction wants the hearer to leave the food, which is located somewhere in a distant place that both the speaker and the hearer cannot see. However, both the speaker and the hearer have an idea about the place where it is located. The hearer should eat the food near the speaker. The difference here is a semantic difference made by the low tones on the vowels of the demonstrative adjective ŋãnã in the construction.

We now turn to look at a construction having ŋãna ‘that (near the hearer)’ and ŋãsáa ‘that (visible to both)’, as in example (75).

(75) Yoro wiĩ ŋãna ŋo táã si wiĩ ŋãsáa. send.IMP child.N that.DEM you AUX leave child that.DEM ‘Send that child and leave that other child over there.’

The demonstrative adjective ŋãna ‘that’ in Viri means the object is a bit far from the speaker and near to the hearer. On the other hand, ŋãsáa ‘that’ means the object is very far but it is still within their vision. So the child required to be sent is the one near the hearer. Finally, we will compare the demonstrative adjectives ŋãsáa and ŋãsíni. Consider example (76).

(76) Mõkõ vórõ ŋãsáa 'dẽ ŋo táã si vórõ ŋãsíni. chase.IMP dog.N that away you AUX leave dog.N that.DEM ‘Chase that dog far away and leave that dog over there.’

The speaker and the hearer are both far away from the dogs but the location of the dog indicated by the demonstrative ŋãsáa is a bit near to the hearer than that located in the farthest place indicated by ŋãsíni, that is, both dogs are visible but the last one is in a remote place. As mentioned earlier, Viri can use these demonstrative adjectives as demonstrative pronouns instead of nouns, as in example (77).

(77) Mõkõ ŋõno ŋo táã si ŋãna. chase.IMP this 2SG AUX leave that ‘Chase this and leave that one.’

The sense here shows that only demonstrative pronouns can replace the direct objects of the two clauses. In this case the speaker and the hearer know what the demonstrative pronouns are referring to from the context. Thus, example (77) represents all the characteristics of all the above constructions if the object noun is replaced in the construction. One important point to remember is that all the demonstratives serve to identify a particular individual or thing, just as specific determiners, such as the definite article ‘the’. The definite article or determiner usually functions to indicate the specificity and the identifiability of the individual entity in question.

5.3 Referential noun phrases

Noun phrases may be used to refer to things that people want to talk about. Jacobs says that “referring is important. Speakers need to refer to people, objects, concepts, processes and all kinds of entities, and noun phrases serve this function” (Jacobs 1995:97). In Viri, the definite referential noun phrases are made by the addition of the demonstrative determiners, possessive pronoun determiners (possessors), indefinite quantifiers, cardinal numbers, interrogative and relative determiners after the nouns they refer to as their referents. Thus we begin with the demonstrative referents. As mentioned earlier, the demonstrative adjectives follow the noun in order to accomplish the definite-referential processes. Consider the examples below.

Singular Plural (78) Wïlḯï ̃ nõo nó zánãa Káwïlḯï ̃ nõo nó kázánãa. girl this.DEM be sister.1PSR PL.girl this.DEM be PL.sister.1PSR ‘This girl is my sister.’ ‘These girls are my sisters.’

In example (78), the antecedent or referent is a noun phrase referred to by its anaphoric reference, which is a possessive noun phrase. The possessive noun phrase that functions as a predicate is arranged so that the kinship noun followed by the first possessive pronoun determiner relates to the noun phrase ‘this girl’. The demonstrative determiner of the referent, nõo, indicates that the referent is actually near the speaker while the possessive determiner in the predicate, zánãa,

48 relates the speaker to the noun phrase ‘this girl’ as kin. If we replace the word nõo ‘this’ with the word na ‘that’, the sentence will read as in (79).

(79) Wïlḯï ̃ na nó zánãa. Káwïlḯï ̃ na nó kázánãa. girl that.DEM be sister.1PSR PL.girl that.DEM be PL.sister.1PSR ‘That girl is my sister.’ ‘Those girls are my sisters.’

In (79), the explanation is similar to the explanation given in (78). The only difference is in the demonstrative articles which contrast by designating the concept of nearness to as opposed to the distance from both participants of the communicative situation. We can also replace the demonstrative articles with the definite article and the sentence will read as in (80).

(80) Wïlḯï ̃ nõo nó zánãa. Káwïlḯï ̃ nõo nó kázánãa. girl the be sister.1PSR PL.girl the be PL.sister.1PSR ‘The girl is my sister.’ ‘The girls are my sisters.’

Note, the definite referential marker nõo/na is the definite article. It does not show any relative distance from both the speaker and the hearer. Even ‘the girl’ referred to in the sentence might not be visible because the reference is not of the spatial deictic values. Other words of reference in the postmodification similar to the examples above are: ŋãna ŋãnã, ŋãsaá, ŋãsíni. All these referential markers, can refer to animate/inanimate/neutral nouns as well as nouns standing for time. We will present noun phrases referring to time in example (81). This example contains the concept of distance which can also be used in relation to time concepts.

(81) a. sóró today b. lü̃vë ́ tomorrow c. lawóró yesterday d. ndoõ a year

We may also add the referential demonstrative to the time phrase, as in example (82).

(82) a. lü̃vë ́ ŋãna tomorrow that ‘that day after tomorrow’

b. lü̃vë ́ ŋãsáa tomorrow that ‘that day after three days time’

c. lü̃vë ́ ŋãsíni tomorrow that ‘that day after four days time’

The same construction can be made by adding the demonstratives after lawóró ‘yesterday’, as in example (83). (83) a. lawóró ŋãna yesterday that ‘that day before yesterday/two days ago’

b. lawóró ŋãsáa yesterday that ‘three days ago’

c. lawóró ŋãsíni yesterday that ‘four days ago’

In examples (82) and (83), all the demonstratives follow the head noun of time that these modifiers describe. We will next look at the postnominal quantifiers and numbers.

5.4 Postnominal quantifiers and numbers

As mentioned in chapter one, in Viri, quantifiers and numbers are said to premodify and postmodify their head nouns in the noun phrases. In chapter four, the prenominal quantifiers and the ordinal numbers have been thoroughly examined. Thus in this chapter, we will look at those quantifiers and numbers that follow their head nouns. We now begin our discussion with quantifiers. The word order for quantifying determiners follows the rule below:

NP → N(Poss) [(Dem)(Ref)](Quan)

We can use the quantifier kpí ‘all’ to make a generalization. Thus consider the examples below.

(84) Káwiĩ kpí lu kí. PL.child all arrive PRF ‘All the children have arrived.’

In sentence (89), the speaker means all the children without exception. It is possible to use the word kpí ‘all’ with a definite article na ‘that’, so as to mean a specific group of children, as in (85). (85) Káwiĩ na kpí lu kí. PL.child DEM all arrive PRF ‘All those children have arrived.’

In example (86) the meaning is also specific, that is, the speaker concerns himself with a specific group of children in the communicative situation. Here, the definite demonstrative na appears after the quantifier rather than before.

(86) Káwiĩ kpí na lu kí. PL.child all DEM arrive PRF ‘Those children have all arrived.’

It is usually possible to use the pronoun in either subject position or object slot before the quantifier kpí ‘all’. In such constructions there is, however, the co-occurrence restriction of the plural marker, as in example (87).

(87) Ndí kpí 'dĩ kí. 3PL all come PRF ‘They all have come.’

In example (87), the third person plural pronoun is followed by the plural quantifier kpí ‘all’. The two morphemes, however, have formed a noun phrase which is the subject of the clause. Now we look at the construction in which the same noun phrase is used as the direct object of the verb. Consider example (88).

(88) Yoro ndí kpí kõno. send-IMP 3PL all here.LOC ‘Send them all here.’

Another construction which we will have to look at is that with cardinal numbers. A cardinal number can be used either before the quantifier or after it so that a noun phrase is formed, as in (89).

(89) a. Zẽrẽ nzo wǘ kpí soó. hold.IMP mouth rope.GEN all.FOC two.NUM ‘Hold the ends of the rope, both of them.’

b. Zẽrẽ nzo wǘ soó kpí. hold.IMP mouth rope.GEN two.NUM all.FOC ‘Hold the two ends of the rope.’ or ‘Hold both ends of the rope.’

In both sentences in (94), the head nouns are in a genitive construction. The quantifying phrase in each sentence has a different syntactic structure. The focus in (89a) is on the number modifier soó ‘two’, rather than the quantifier kpí ‘all’. But in (89b), the focus is on the word kpí ‘all’, while the cardinal number remains unfocused. If we add any demonstrative article between the noun wǘ ‘rope’ and the quantifier or number, the meaning will change from a general to a specific rope, as in example (95).

(90) Zẽrẽ nzo wǘ na kpí soó. hold.IMP mouth rope.GEN that.DEM all.FOC two.NUM ‘Hold all those two ends of that rope.’

Moreover, there is the possibility of replacing the noun in the construction with the plural pronoun. The plural marker ká- cannot co-occur or is not needed with a number. Remember that the number of the participants is not restricted to two in such cases, as in example (91).

(91) a. Yoro ndí kpí taú kõno. send.IMP 3PL all.FOC three.NUM here.LOC ‘Send all three of them here.’

b. Ndí kpí taú nó kõno. 3PL all.FOC three.NUM be here.LOC ‘All three of them are here.’

In sentence (91a), the noun phrase is the object, while in (91b), the noun phrase is the subject. Note that the structure of the noun phrases in (91a) and (91b) can be changed as in (89) and (90), that is to say, either kpí ‘all’ can come before taú ‘three’ or vice versa. We will now look at another quantifier which follows the noun in the noun phrase construction. Note that in chapter four, the homophonous morpheme 'bḯï,̃ with several meanings, has been used in prenominal noun phrase constructions. We use the same morpheme here, but as a postnominal modifier with a different meaning, as in example (92).

(92) Yoro nvã 'bḯï ̃ ze. send.IMP knife particular to.1SG ‘Send a particular knife to me.’

In example (92), the use of 'bḯï ̃ after the noun implies that the knife which is requested by the speaker is a particular knife, not an indefinite knife but a definite and known knife. In chapter four, we used the ordinal number as the prenominal modifier in the noun phrase. In this chapter, we will use the cardinal number which comes immediately after the noun to function as the ordinal number determiner. The combination is vã + nzẽe ‘place + one’ or ‘place + first’. To use the combination vã nzẽe as an ordinal number determiner in the postnominal construction, the ordinal number phrase must precede the preposition wá ‘of’, which also precedes the noun that it modifies, as in example (93).

(93) [vã nzẽe] [wá wiĩ] nó nõo. place.NP one of.PP child be this ‘This is the first child.’

In example (93), the ordinal number noun phrase vã nzẽe precedes the prepositional phrase, that is, the postnominal noun phrase acts as a head noun and the prepositional phrase acts as its postmodifier in the construction. We will now move to look at the interrogative determiners.

5.5 Interrogative determiners

The interrogative determiners are normally used to modify the nouns that they associate with. Givón (1990) states that they are used, “when the speaker and hearer share the knowledge of a proposition – it is presupposed or backgrounded – but the speaker does not know one element in the proposition” (Givón 1990:793). In English, the interrogative determiners come before the head noun that they describe, for example: Which man do you want? What material do you actually need? Whose dogs are in the garden? In these English examples, all three determiners precede their nouns in the constructions. In the first and second examples, the noun phrases are objects that are fronted. In Viri, the order is different, although the semantics and the functions are the same as in English. The word order in Viri is postnominal – the modifier follows the head in each construction in which the hearer is requested to supply the species or to identify an argument or entity. Thus the Viri rule for the interrogative postnominal noun phrase is as follows:

NP → N (Inter Adj)

Following this interrogative noun phrase rule, here are some examples in Viri.

(94) A wiĩ ngã? QM child which ‘Which child?’

In (94), the interrogative word ngã ‘which’ is used as a determiner, which functions to modify a head noun in each case. So it has been used for both animate and inanimate head nouns. The word ‘what’ is another possible determiner that can be used for both humans and non- humans or animate and inanimate nouns. ‘What’ may be thought of as an indefinite article, since it only relates to the indefinite word, a (Eastwood 1994:30-31). So the word nĩ ‘what’ in Viri is used also after the noun in the noun phrase, as in example (95).

(95) A murukpáã nĩ gbí tiĩ. QM book what in room ‘What book is in the room?’

Note also that the determiner nĩ ‘what’ can be used for both animate and inanimate nouns, including humans, as in example (96).

(96) A wiĩ nĩ? QM child what ‘What child?’

Also, in Viri there is a word 'di, which means both ‘which’ and ‘who’. So we can use 'di with the meaning ‘which’ to refer to both humans and non-humans, as shown in example (97).

(97) A wu'dũ 'di? QM person who ‘Which person?’

But we use the same word 'di ‘who’ for humans. It must be borne in mind that the structure may be quite different from (97), that is, it takes a pronoun that precedes it in every case that may happen, as in example (98).

Singular Plural (98) a. A ŋo 'di? A 'da ká'di? QM 2SG who QM 2PL PL.who ‘Who are you?’ ‘Who are you (pl)?’

Here, in (98) the questions requires the identification of the person signified by the personal pronouns. It is also possible to form a possessive interrogative determiner in Viri. This is done by adding the possessive markers for ‘of’, ndí, ngã, and wá, to the interrogative 'di ‘who’ to create ndi'di, ngã'di, and wá'di ‘whose’ in each case. In fact, although the word ‘of’ is treated here as having three different variants, these variants have the same meaning, as in the example (99). Example (99a) deals with inanimate noun possession, while (b) and (c) deal with animate noun possession. Example (b) deals with human, while (a) and (c) deal with non-human noun possession. If we add the possessive marker wá instead of ndi, ngã in example (99), the same meanings will be obtained.

(99) a. A 'bá ndi'di? QM house of.who ‘Whose house?’

b. A wiĩ ngã'di? QM child of.who ‘Whose child?’

c. A wiĩ ndi'di? QM child of.who ‘Whose child?’

d. A vórõ ndi'di? QM dog of.who ‘Whose dog?’

We will now proceed to a discussion of the relative determiner in the relative clause.

5.6 Relative clauses

A relative clause usually modifies a noun or a noun phrase. According to Bickford. A relative clause is a clause which is embedded in a noun phrase and which describes the head noun. It functions like an adjective in that it helps to specify what the head noun refers to or provides further information about it. (Bickford 1998:331) In Viri, the relative clause comes after the head noun which it modifies in the postnominal construction. In this section we will discuss two kinds of relative clauses, namely, restrictive and non- restrictive relative clauses. Consider example (100).

(100) Ká-wiĩ õo nve ŋiĩ 'bá gbá nóo tí rõta võndõ. PL-child the who know house not COMPL be stand outside ‘The children who did not know the house are standing outside.’

In example (100), the relative clause is a restrictive relative clause which functions to identify the head noun by stating the essential condition for being the referent of the noun. This means that the restrictive relative clause just defines the noun. The sentence tells us that some of the children knew the house and had gone in, but those who did not know it were still standing outside. In such cases commas are not used in a clause. In contrast, a non-restrictive relative clause does not define or limit the head noun, but adds additional information about the head noun. It does not define the head noun because usually the specification or identification is complete without the relative clause. In example (101), a non- restrictive relative clause merely provides us with further information that we as readers would not know. The additional information in the subordinate clause can be left out without causing any problem to the main clause. New information is surrounded by commas. There is no other difference between a restrictive and a non-restrictive clause. In both sentences, the relative clauses are introduced by the relative pronoun nve ‘who’, which follows the demonstrative determiner preceded by the head noun.

(101) Ká-wiĩ nõo, nve mgbã vílĩ lawóró nóo, tí 'dĩĩ. PL-child the who stole money yesterday COMPL PROG come ‘The children, who stole money yesterday, are coming.’

In certain constructions the relative pronoun nve ‘who’ can follow the head noun directly without a demonstrative determiner preceding it. In example (102), the second clause of the sentence is the relative clause which is connected to the first clause. The relative clause tells us what actually occurred next, that is, the killing of the dog. Note that the two clauses are separated by a comma, or pause.

(102) Wiĩ ya 'bĩ Úfõ, nve nzi vórõ. child.NP.SBJ go.PST to.PREP name.PROP who kill.PST dog.OBJ ‘The child went to Ufo, who killed a dog.’

There is also another relative pronoun ká ‘that’. The word ká is used in a cleft sentence to introduce the relative clause that defines the head noun in the construction. It actually emphasizes the doer. In (103), the speaker wants to emphasize the identity of the subject or person who did the very thing that he, the subject, did.

(103) A Úfõ ká ma yí na. it(is) name.PROP who do.PST thing.OBJ that.REF ‘It is Ufo who did that thing.’

We will now turn to examine the prepositional phrase.

5.7 Prepositional phrases

The prepositional phrase is normally made up of the preposition and its noun phrase object. According to L. Thomas (1993:91), a “prepositional phrase is an adjective phrase which functions to modify the head noun that precedes it.” In Viri, the prepositional phrase must follow the noun that it modifies. The prepositional phrase word order is represented by the phrasal rules below:

NP → N (PP) PP → P NP

Now we will show some examples. In example (104), the prepositional phrase acts as an adjective modifying the head noun ‘child’. The whole noun phrase functions as the subject of the clause. The prepositional phrase describes the location of the child. As it is shown in the example, the head noun and the noun in the prepositional phrase are related to one another by the preposition.

(104) Wiĩ gbí tiĩ tí tõ gbí. child.N.HEAD in room be PROG cry ‘A child in the room is crying.’

We can form more constructions that involve the prepositional phrases in Viri with different meanings even if the order of their occurrences are the same. The differences in meaning are usually due to different prepositions, as in example (105).

(105) a. Ze nzá zi wiĩ. Benefactive give.IMP food.NP.DO to.PREP child.NP.IDO ‘Give food to the child.’

b. Ngõ tiĩ tã ngǘü̃. Locative build.IMP hut.NP under.PREP tree.NP ‘Build a hut under the tree.’

c. Ya-á Wau ta kẽsẽ liĩ. Instrumental go-to name.PLACE with.PREP donkey iron ‘Go to Wau by bicycle.’

d. Ní gbĩ wiĩ ta ’bḯ. Instrumental 3SG.SBJ beat.PST child.NP.DO with.PREP hand.NP ‘He beat the child with his hand.’

In (105), all the prepositional phrases in the constructions follow the head noun that they modify. We will now turn to look at the coordinate noun phrase.

5.8 Coordinate noun phrase

A coordinate noun phrase (COOR NP) consists of two or more noun phrases joined together by a conjunction placed between them. In English, “coordinating (or ) conjunctions are used when the two units joined together are alike and of equal importance, e.g., and, or, but” (Bickford 1998:10). In Viri, the conjunctions or linking words include ta ‘and’ wágbá ‘or’ 'dĩize ‘along with’, and a comparative device kálá ‘like’. These act as co-ordinating conjunctions. The noun phrase grid in Viri may be filled by proper nouns, common nouns, pronouns, compound nouns, possessive noun phrases, or appositional noun phrases. Thus the coordinate noun phrase patterns as:

ta dĩize Coor NP → NP NP wágbá kálá

Therefore, we can link two or more noun phrases with the above conjunctions, as shown in the examples (106) below with coordinate noun phrases. Example (106a) has two proper nouns linked by the coordinate conjunction ta ‘and’. Both nouns carry equal weight. Though the first noun phrase is marked with the plural marker preceding it, while the second is unmarked, nevertheless it includes both in order to mean only two of them and not more. In (106b) there are three proper nouns which are coordinated in series by the conjunctions ta ‘and’ and 'dĩize ‘along with/together with’. The three noun phrases, as mentioned earlier, have equal importance.

(106) a. Ká-Úfõ ta Úgãli tí 'dĩi. PL-name.PROP and.COORD name.PROP PROG come ‘Ufo and Ugali are coming.’

b. Úfõ ta Úgãli 'dĩize Úkëlë nó kãnã. name.PROP and.COORD name.PROP with.COORD name.PROP be there.LOC ‘Ufo and Ugali along with Ukele are there.’

c. Álímgbá 'dĩize lürü nó kánanüü̃. kite.NP along.with.COORD vulture be PL.bird.NP ‘A kite along with a vulture are birds.’

d. Ze vẽtẽrẽ vórõ wágbá wó vórõ. take.IMP black.ADJ dog.N or.COORD white.ADJ dog ‘Take a black dog or a white dog.’

e. Úfõ, nve-do ta wi-wó tí 'dĩi. name.PROP master-lie and.COORD child-his.PSR PROG come ‘Ufo, a liar, and his son are coming.’

f. 'Da ta ndí nó ká-nveẽ. 2PL and.COOR 3PL be PL-relative ‘You and they are relatives.’

g. Úfõ kálá Ufḯndḯ ándi ndí nó ká-nzínza. name.PROP as.COORD name.PROP because 3PL be PL-twin ‘Ufo is like Ufindi because they are twins.’

In (c), the two noun phrases are also coordinated by the conjunction 'dĩize ‘along with’. The two noun phrases have the same identity. In (d), the two noun phrases are modified by adjectives of colour. The word wágbá ‘or’ here is more emphatic and it further expresses there is an alternative – either the addressee takes the black dog or the white dog. In (e), the appositional noun phrase is joined by the co-ordinating conjunction to the possessive noun phrase. In (f), the predicate noun is the complement referring back to the coordinated subject pronouns. Finally, in (g), the two noun phrases of proper nouns are coordinated by a comparative device. They are joined to the third person plural subject of the copula. The word kánzínza ‘twins’ is a nominal complement which refers to ndí ‘they’. Table 5.6 is a representative diagram for the coordinated noun phrase, using an example from Viri. Table 5.6. The coordinated noun phrase Vẽtẽrẽ vórõ ta wó vórõ.

NP Coord NP

AP N Conj AP N

A A

vẽtẽrẽ vórõ ta wó vórõ black dog and white dog

Finally, table 5.7 shows the relative positions of the postnominal modifiers in Viri.

Table 5.7. Postnominal modifiers in the noun phrase

Chapter 6 Conclusion and Suggestions

This chapter is the conclusion to the investigation and descriptive analysis of noun phrases in Viri. The results will be compared with expected linguistic universals and other Ubangi languages. We will also try to provide some suggestions for future linguistic research in this language.

6.1 Conclusion

In chapter one, the aims of this research were given as follows: 1. To define the sound system in the Viri language. 2. To provide an adequate grammatical description and analysis of the noun phrases in Viri, because no scholar had attempted to provide any linguistic account of the noun phrase structure in this language. It is possible to predict the positions of modifiers in the noun phrase construction; some modifiers usually appear before the noun and some after the noun. 3. To identify problems within the Viri noun phrase. An interesting problem was presented by the homonymous word 'bḯï,̃ which has several meanings and occurs in several places before the noun and after the noun. There was also a problem with numbers, since we observed that the cardinal numbers occur after the noun in the noun phrase, while ordinal numbers can occur before and after the noun. We have shown that the type of ordinal number that follows the noun is a combination of the morpheme vã plus any cardinal number. Since these problems are known to occur in noun phrase structures, they must be studied and the findings compared with the expected linguistic universals and other Ubangi languages. Chapter three gave a description of the sound system and orthographic conventions for Viri. In chapter four, modifiers and descriptive adjectives consistently appeared before the nouns they described, in every example illustrating prenominal noun phrase structures. However, in chapter five, the modifiers came after the nouns in the postnominal noun phrase constructions. The only modifier that occurred on both sides of the noun is the word 'bḯï ̃ and the words belonging to the same class, ordinal numbers, which have been found to occur before the noun and after the noun. The research questions presented in chapter one have all been answered, since we found that words of the same class are expected to occur on both sides of the noun. In the modifier-noun (M-N) constructions, the modifiers occur before the nouns in prenominal noun phrases, and in noun- modifier (N-M) constructions, nouns occur before the modifiers, that is, the modifiers come after the noun in the postnominal noun phrase construction. It is clear that Viri has primarily an AN language structure. However, there are significant exceptions that would not conform to the universals as cited by Comrie. As has been shown in the previous chapters, the common descriptive adjectives and some quantifiers occur before the noun they modify. However, possessives, demonstratives, some quantifiers and numerals do occur in the post nominal position. Of particular note is the fact that certain quantifiers occur on each side of the noun. The homophonous bïï is of particular interest. When it comes before the noun it signals ‘a, some’ but after the noun its meaning is ‘particular’. The Viri orthography has been developed from the consonant and vowel inventories. The vowels are marked for the feature Advanced Tongue Root [ATR] and tone has been consistently marked in these data. However, there has not yet been agreement on the use of tone marks in the orthography by the community. We will sum up all that we have described in chapters three, four and five in these sentences: 1. The Viri orthography has been set up from the consonant and vowel inventories. The vowel inventory has two sets known as [+ATR] and [–ATR], and tone. 2. In Viri noun phrase structures, modifiers have been found to appear on both sides of the noun. Such constructions are common among the languages of the world and particularly among the Ubangi languages, which includes Viri .

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6.2 Suggestions

Although the topic of this research has been the noun phrase structure, not all of the noun phrases have been covered. Since I stated earlier that this is the first of this kind of study to be carried out in Viri and that there is very little known literature in this language, we recommend the following topics for future study: • pronouns as subject, object, bound clitic, free clitic, possessive forms in the predicate, and reflexive reciprocal, • different kinds of nouns (abstract, mass, countable, and uncountable), • more work on co-ordination and comparative noun phrase constructions, • time NP constructions, • verb clause structure, • discourse studies on the morpheme 'bḯï,̃ • phonological issues that are unresolved or unexplained, and • morphological issues of the diminutive and augmentative in noun phrases.

Appendix A: Additional Literature in Belanda Viri

Fahal, Ashhab Khamis. 1996. The story of Uvekpaa Fali Ukanda. Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Fahal, Ashhab Khamis, Batista Ilario Kaima, and Atilio Dominic Mandil. 1997. Protection against disease. Khartoum Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Fahal, Ashhab Khamis, Batista Ilario Kaima, and Pons Ukola Pons. 1996. Viri children (sic) book. Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Kaima, Batista Ilario, and Arkangelo Njofo Tartisio. 1997. Workshop Edition. Hyena the deceiver. Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Khartoum Workshop Programme. 1993. The adventure of Wuzimgbu. Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme:. Khartoum Workshop Programme. 1995a. Alphabet book. Khartoum Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Khartoum Workshop Programme. 1995b. Animal stories in Viri language. Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Khartoum Workshop Programme. 1995c. Tone story book. Khartoum Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Khartoum Workshop Programme. 1996a. Alphabet story book, Part 1. Khartoum Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Khartoum Workshop Programme 1996b. Short stories in Viri Language. Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Khartoum Workshop Programme. 1996c. The story of Uvekpaa Fali Ukanda. Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Institute for Regional Languages. 1983a. Alphabet story book. Maridi, Sudan: Institute for Regional Languages. Institute for Regional Languages. 1983b. Belanda story book. Maridi, Sudan: Institute for Regional Languages. Goyi, David Tani. 1983a. Adult primer. Experimental Edition. Maridi, Sudan: Institute of Regional Languages. Goyi, David Tani. 1983b. Belanda Viri alphabet book. Maridi, Sudan: Institute for Regional Languages. Goyi, David Tani. 1983c. Instructions for how to use Viri primer. Maridi, Sudan: Institute of Regional Languages. Goyi, David Tani. 1990. Orthography statement. Maridi, Sudan: Institute of Regional Languages. Goni va Rabi, John, Edward Njereenge, Martha R. David, and David Tani Goyi. 1995. Alphabet book. Maridi, Sudan: Institute for Regional Languages. Wáũ, Clement Mur'bá. 1996a. Alphabet sentence book. Part 1. Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Wáũ, Clement Mur'bá. 1996b. Away to Viri home: Transition primer from English to Viri. Khartoum Workshop Programme, Khartoum Sudan. Wáũ, Clement Mur'bá, Ashhab Khamis Fahal, Batista Ilario Kaima, Sabino Fausto Magbe, and Lina Mario Allajabu. 1996c. Viri poems book. Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Wáũ, Clement Mur'bá. 1996d. Viri Traditional stories. Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Wáũ, Clement Mur'bá. 1995. Alphabet story book. Maridi, Sudan: Institute for Regional Languages.

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Wáũ, Clement Mur'bá and Batista Ilario Kaima. 1997. Riddles in Viri language and English. Part 1. Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme. Wáũ, Clement Mur'bá, Paul Mongu, Ashhab K. Fahal, Pons Ukola Pons, and Batista Ilario Kaima. 1998. Proverbs in Viri and English. Trial edition. Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum Workshop Programme.

Appendix B: List of Words from Text Material a it is gara to burn very slightly Ãdũ personal name for both gõmõ bending of something male and female gõrõ to smell Ágãli female personal name gü̃ grandparent áfoyo rabbit gü̃rü̃ a hole áku female personal name gbá not álimgbá kite gbã buffalo 'bã to see gbáã boat 'bá home gbándã cassava 'bëë̃ my hand gbãngã to sway 'bĩ with gbẽle only, single, each, every 'bḯï ̃ another, same, particular gbërë to paralyse 'borõ porcupine gbërëḯ to paralyse it dẽ monkey gbi pumpkin do a lie gbí in, a cry dókõ soft, smooth, new gbĩ to beat dïr̃ ï ̃ stone gbǘü̃ forest, woods dïr̃ ï ̃ body ka to stick to dü heavy ká PLURAL MARKER, RELATIVE dũ to dig PRONOUN dü̃mä ̃ wine made out of honey kã wound dũngã small wild animal like a kálã pot squirrel kãrã to pour, to change, to turn 'da you (PL) kárã a hoe 'dakõ a man kere very 'dandã we, us kẽrẽ a basket 'de to find kesĩ three stones with fire in 'di who the middle for cooking 'do to be, to stay kẽwẽ to scratch 'dü to satisfy ki to break (once) 'duũ we, us kí have, PRF fala to roll kĩ to break (several times) fele to squeeze kḯ breast feleí to squeeze it könǵ ä ̃ a kind of bird fítí small, little kökö a cock fóngúũ cassava kóno here (definite location) fü̃ to mix kõno here (indefinite location) fü̃i mix it kõrõ grandchild fü̃lü̃ dust köt́ ḯ many fũlũ to praise kõwe quick, fast ga to insult kü̃lë ̃ a wild dove gá a bat kǘköñ ï ̃ first gã big kũsé navel gäm̃ är̃ ä ̃ old kpáã leaf gãrã a bell kpẽkẽrẽ rough gärä a guard kpí all

61 62 kpí soó both ndi of kpĩ sour ndí they, them kpó laziness ndïñ gïl̃ ï ̃ round kpórõ drum ndõ short kpõkõrõ hard, strong ndöŋö your kpũmgbũ much and high (of grass ndöö ́ his, her, its and hair) ndoõ year le my eye ngã which, insult légéré only, alone ngo water lẽmĩ sweet ngõ to build li sun ngü̃rü̃ chicken lí honey ngúũ tree lĩ sleep nvã knife lïmö a kind of wild sourfruit nvãrãkpã red plant nve owner lo eye nvedo a liar lõ to cook nveẽ relative ̃ ̃ logïrï on the road nvegb'índi second, that follows the loí its eye kü̃köñ ï ̃ first loó his/her eye nvekpó a lazy person loŋo your eye nvẽlẽ heritage lu to arrive nvewïlï a guest ma to do, to make, is nzá food mã a quarrel nzã tall mángã mango nzi to kill mãŋĩ a substance dug from the nzĩ intestine ground used on walls with nzí sharp white or pink colour nzï salt mẽ tongue nzorõ wild cat mẽlẽ to try ŋãna that (visible) mólõ leopard ŋãnã that (not visible but kept muru head in memory) mgbãngã a case. court ŋãsáa that (distant and visible) mgbémgbé crocodile ŋãsíni that (very far and visible) na that ŋo you (SG) nako people ŋó nice ̃ nanüü bird ŋõno this nanze animal ri to ambush ne I, me rõ to stop, to stand nẽ a trap rõkõ bony like ní he, she, it, him, her, its rũ to bite (several times) nĩ what ré alone nó is sáa that nõ very sãnĩ poverty nõo this sẽ fish ́ nülë rotten dry fish used for serẽ near, by food semuru hair ndã we, us sogo to hate ndë my sögö the last born ndẽ a work solo a sack

63 sü̃kü last wiĩ child ta with, and, ground wili heat of the sun (lit. fire tã under sun) tãmã shoe wïlï to be hot, guest tḯrḯ load wó his tï ̃ tooth wo time, season tí is, against wu'du person, human tiĩ hut, house ya go, elephant tïrï to refuse, to reject yeẽ medicine, behaviour tiri to move in great numbers yëë ̃ up tú message yele to tie tǘ earth yélé to move slowly and úgãli male personal name quietly úku male personal name yélẽ cold úkũkí a kind of fish yẽlẽ to cool, a kind of plant ũlürü̃ a kind of animal used for yivi good food yó dawn útönï̃ hyena yoro to send vala to push forward zã to eat vanga nice, beautiful zãi eat it vã for, place, son of ze give, to me vãa my father zi to vãvá my father zoó to him, for him vẽlẽ sling zu bitter vẽtẽrẽ black vi to redden vï a kind of plant vïrï̃ person, name of a tribe and a language võ bad volo eyeball võngú cloth, clothing võndõ outside voó his father vórõ dog vu father of vu'da your father (PL) vu'duũ our father (EXCL) vu'dandã our father (INCL PL) vundã our father (INCL) vundí their father vune my father vuŋo your father vuũ father wá of wána brother of wánaã my brother wánaŋo your (SG) brother wánaú his/her brother wi fire

Appendix C: Topical Word List

English Body Parts Plural back kafí kákafí belly (stomach) yï ̃ káyï ̃ bone 'bilĩ ká'bilĩ breast (woman's) kḯ kákḯ chest kuru kákuru chin tãnzo kátãnzo ear sũ kásũ eye lo kálo foot kpáãmgbó kákpáãmgbó forehead tïlö̃ kátïlö̃ hair semuru kásemuru hand 'bï ̃ ká'bï ̃ head muru kámuru heart ádúlã káádúlã intestines (guts) nzĩ kánzi knee murudurumgbó kámurudurumgbó leg mgbó kámgbó liver lé kálé meat yáã káyáã mouth nzo kánzo neck mïlï kámïlï nose ŋõ káŋõ skin kúũ kákúũ thigh dikã kádikã tongue mẽ kámẽ tooth tï ̃ kátï ̃

English Animal Parts Plural claw kusilimgbó, 'bï ̃ kákusilimgbó, ká'bï ̃ egg fãlã káfãlã feather mgbũ kámgbũ horn 'de ká'de tail sílã kásílã wing nvḯlä ̃ kánvḯlä ̃

English Animals Plural animal nanze kánanze bat gá kágá bird nanüü̃ kánanüü̃ buffalo gbã kágbã bull mükülü kámükülü chicken (hen) ngü̃rü̃ kángü̃rü̃ cow sã kásã crocodile mgbémgbé kámgbémgbé dog vórõ kávórõ

64 65 donkey kẽsẽ kákẽsẽ dove kü̃lë ̃ kákü̃lë ̃ dragonfly ngã'dẽrẽ kángã'dẽrẽ elephant ya káya fish sẽ kásẽ fly naũ kánaũ goat dele kádele hippopotamus fïrï káfïrï leopard mólõ kámólõ lizard dĩmgbõ kádĩmgbõ louse sïï ̃ kásïï ̃ monkey vḯmḯ kávḯmḯ octopus näyïngö kánäyïngö ostrich gãngã kágãngã scorpion sene kásene sheep rónvo kárónvo snail sé kásé snake kporo kákporo tortoise dürü kádürü worm télẽ kátélẽ

English Nature Plural ash vǘrǘ vǘrǘ cloud vẽmũ vẽmũ dust lü̃rü̃ lü̃rü̃ earth (ground) tǘ tǘ fire wi wi fog (mist) kü̃ngü̃rü̃wo kü̃ngǘrü̃wo ice vogbülǘ vogbülü lake (pond) wãkpã káwãkpã moon fï ̃ fï ̃ mountain (hill) gõtĩ kágõtĩ pebble vodḯrḯ vodḯrḯ river nami nami salt (natural) nzï nzï sand ngirã ngirã shadow tãza tãza sky loli loli smoke ngürü̃wi ngürü̃wi spirit zegelẽtí zegelẽtí star vosirí kávosirí stone dḯrḯ kádḯrḯ sun li li wind gündïrï gündïrï woods (forest) gbǘü̃ gbǘü̃

English Liquids Plural beer fe fe blood nvelẽ nvelẽ dung (of cow) tẽ (nõ) tẽ

66 excrement (human) tẽ (wu'dũ) tẽ fat (oil) vãrã vãrã honey li li milk ngokḯ ngokḯ porridge wíĩ wíĩ pus sũ sũ saliva ngonzo ngonzo tear ngolo ngolo water ngo ngo

English Plant Parts Plural bark (of tree) kũvãrãsĩ kákũvãrãsĩ flower wĩ ngúũ káwĩ ngúũ fruit volḯ ngúũ kávolḯ ngúũ grass wü̃ wü̃ leaf kpáã ngúũ kpáã ngúũ root tãterẽ ngúũ kátãterẽ ngúũ seed voŋa voŋa sesame tuũ tuũ thorn kpelẽ kákpelẽ tree ngúũ kángúũ

English Man-made Objects Plural canoe gbáã kágbáã charcoal vokïlï kávokïlï clothing võngú kávõngú door nzokozĩ kánzokozĩ drum kporo kákporo fence ndũgũ kándũgũ field nzú kánzú fish-spear ãwḯyä ̃ káawḯyä ̃ house tiĩ kátiĩ kitchen dãnga kádãnga lyre kũndïŋï kákũndïŋï path (road) gïr̃ ï ̃ kágïr̃ ï ̃ pot kálã kákálã rope wǘ káwǘ shield göï kágöï shoe tãmã kátãmã spear 'daã ká'daã stool (chair) kítĩ kákítĩ village 'bá ká'bá

English Time day gãgãli night döó year ndoõ

English Location here (indefinite) kõno here (definite) kóno there kãnã near suũ far 'dǘ left side murugilã right side muruku'bï ̃

English Relationships Plural man 'dako ká'dako woman nïï ̃ kánïï ̃ husband vunïï ̃ kávunïï ̃ wife naũ'dakõ kánaũ'dakõ father vuũ kávuũ mother naã kánaã child wiĩ káwiĩ brother wánaã káwánaã sister zánaã kázánaã person wu'dũ kánako name lẽ kálẽ

English Pronouns Plural I ne we (exclusive) 'duũ we (inclusive) ndã, 'dandã you (singular) ŋo you (plural) 'da he ní they ndí this ŋõno káŋõno that ŋãna, ŋãsáa, ŋãsíni káŋãna, káŋãsáa, káŋãsíni

English Age new ngú old gäm̃ är̃ ä ̃

English Quantity all kpí few nvu many köt́ ḯ some 'bḯï ̃

English Colour black vẽtẽrẽ green kpáã red nvãrãkpã white wó yellow fãlãúgãrã

English Quality (Size) big gã small fítí long nzã short ndõ narrow kpí'dírĩ wide wãkpãkã thick nãkpãkã thin líndí

English Numbers one nzẽe two soó three taú four nãu five vöö ́ six vöö ́ loí nzẽe seven vöö ́ loí soó eight vöö ́ loí taú nine vöö ́ loí nãu ten 'bïkürü̃ fifteen 'bïkürü̃ loí vöö ́ twenty vẽ'di nzẽe one hundred zoko nzẽe

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