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Aspects of Kaakye Grammar.Pdf University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh UNIVERSITY OF GHANA COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES ASPECTS OF KAAKYE GRAMMAR BY LEVINA NYAMEYE ABUNYA 10106443 THIS THESIS IS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF GHANA, LEGON IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF PHD LINGUISTICS DEGREE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS JULY 2018 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh i DECLARATION I do hereby declare that this thesis is the result of my own original research and has not been presented either in whole or in part for another degree elsewhere. References to other sources of information used in this work have been duly acknowledged. ................................................... ....................................... LEVINA NYAMEYE ABUNYA Date (Candidate) ……………………………... ......…………………….. PROF. E. KWEKU OSAM Date (Principal Supervisor) …………………………… .....…………………….. PROF. KOFI K. SAAH Date (Supervisor) ……………………………. ………………………... PROF. NANA ABA A. AMFO Date (Supervisor) University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh ii DEDICATION To my adorable children, Nathanael Mawunge Teye, Daniella Nyameye Teye, Gabriel Mawukle Abunya Teye. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I thank God Almighty for being my source of strength throughout my academic life. I am particularly grateful to Him for giving me good health and sound mind for completing this thesis successfully. It is said that nobody makes it alone on the road to success. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my principal supervisor Prof. Emmanuel Kweku Osam. With his expertise on functionalism, broad knowledge on the Kwa languages and, particularly, his vast knowledge on the topics I investigated in this thesis, he guided me to better understand the topics and shaped my ideas on some of the difficult issues I investigated. He persistently made sure my research progressed smoothly. I am very grateful to him for his encouragement, patience (especially during my pregnancy stages) and his tremendous support in helping me get funding for my research. I am very grateful to my other supervisors Prof. Kofi Saah and Prof. Nana Aba Appiah Amfo for their useful comments and constructive criticisms which helped to improve the quality of my thesis. I also thank Dr. James Saanchi, Dr Clement Appah, Dr. Reginald Duah, Dr. Seth Ofori, Dr. Mercy Bobuafor for their motivation and varied support. To all lecturers in the department who contributed to my academic life, I say thank you. Many thanks also go to the Krachiwura (the chief of Krachi), Nana Mpra Besemuna III, for granting me the permit to carry out my research in his jurisdiction. I am greatly indebted to the Ghana Institute of Linguistics, Literacy and Bible Translation (GILLBT) team (my main consultants) and the other native speaker consultants who shared their enormous knowledge of the language and warm friendships with me. I would like to especially thank University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh iv Vincent Denteh, Moses Danso, Miss Linda Ntumy, Mr. Kofi Oware, and Mr. Tio Keyeke, for their invaluable support during the data collection process. I am deeply grateful to Pastor William Offei Antwi and his wife, Mrs. Joyce Antwi and their family, Pastor Kofi Boateng and his wife, Mrs. Dorcas Boateng, all of The Church of Pentecost, Lakeside District and Krachikrom District, respectively, for hosting me during some of my fieldtrips. I am indebted to them for their generosity. My fieldwork and research was funded by UG-Carnegie Corporation of New York under its Next Generation of Academics in Africa (NGAA) project. I greatly appreciate their financial assistance. My friends and colleagues in the department were my constant source of inspiration and support during my PhD programme. Many thanks to Edward Owusu, Helen Atipoka, Ebenezer Asenyor, Emma Sarah Eshun, Abigail Ayiglo Kuwornu, Sadat Mohammed and Obed Nii Broohm. Finally, I could not have come this far without the support of my family. My husband, Noah Teye, has been a great source of support throughout my PhD programme. I am indeed grateful to him for his love, patience, motivation and his financial assistance. Many thanks for caring for the kids during my absence. Special thanks go to my children: Nathanael, Daniella, and Gabriel for understanding that, mummy needed concentration whenever she was doing her homework. My parents, Pastor Michael K. K. Abunyah and Mrs Cynthia Abunyah; and my siblings, Mrs. Thelma Abunyah Obuade and Osborn Abunyah, deserve my special thanks for their financial and moral support. Their constant prayers were my anchor during the hard times. They sacrificed a lot to make this thesis a dream come true. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh v ABSTRACT This thesis examines some aspects of Kaakye grammar within the functional- typological framework. These aspects primarily concern noun class system and animacy distinctions, relativization, complementation and serialization. Kaakye is one of the least studied Guan (Kwa, Niger Congo) languages, spoken in the northern part of the Volta Region of Ghana. The data collected for the study was mainly based on natural discourse from native speakers in the Kaakye speaking community. The corpus included spontaneous spoken text of various genres, elicitation and data from written sources. Adopting a singular-plural pairing notion, Kaakye nouns were classified into six classes. The classification revealed a clearer semantic basis for at least three of the noun classes. It also showed that the language is sensitive to human/non human distinction on one hand and animate/inanimate distinction on the other hand. Nouns agree with numerals and a few adjectives with some restrictions within the noun phrase. The synchronic data analysed for the study showed that Kaakye has maintained the Proto-Guan noun classes (Snider 1988) in the development of its noun class system. Nonetheless, there are two emerging noun class pairings and the loss of singular and plural prefixes. Evidence is also provided to show that the noun class system is undergoing decay. Regarding relative clauses (RCs), it was shown that Kaakye RCs are strictly post-nominal. Both the head noun and its referent within the RC are obligatorily expressed. Unlike some Kwa languages, the head nouns obligatorily take a definite determiner. Kaakye uses both the pronoun retention and the gap strategy to indicate the canonical positions the head noun occupies University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh vi in the RC. The study also demonstrates that all the NP positions are accessible to relativization in Kaakye. Kaakye, however, contradicts two constraints of the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy. Kaakye employs a relative marker kɛ́ to mark the beginning of the relative clause. Evidence is provided to suggest that the relative marker is diachronically derived from the manner demonstrative adverb kɛ́ nɩ̀ŋ̀ ‘like this/that’ through a grammaticalization process. On complementation, it was revealed that Kaakye employs five distinct complementizers and two complementation strategies: nominalized strategy and relativized strategy, all of which serve as the object complements of complement taking verbs (CTVs). The choice of these complementizers and complementation strategies is, to a large extent, determined by the semantics of the CTVs and to some extent by the tense, aspect, mood and negation effects of the CTVs reflected in the matrix clause. The study identifies four semantic types of CTVs in Kaakye: perception-cognitive-utterance (P-C-U) verbs, manipulation verbs, modality verbs and evaluation verbs. Examining the co- referential relation, tense, aspect, mood and negation between the CTVs and the complement clauses, it is observed that Kaakye generally conforms to Givón’s (2000) notion of event integration. A diachronic account of the source of the complementizers shows that unlike most Kwa languages of West Africa, none of its complementizers is derived from the verb ‘say’. Finally, the discussion on Serial Verb Constructions (SVC) in Kaakye showed that Kaakye SVC can have the same syntactic subject which may be expressed once on the initial verbs or on every verb. The verbs in series may either share the same object or each may have their own objects. The verbs University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh vii may have different aspectual and transitivity values. The verbs in most cases share the same tense, aspect and mood which are marked once on the initial verb. Negation is marked only once on the initial verb. Kaakye, like its closely- related and non-related neighbouring Kwa languages, shows a pathway to grammaticalization through serial verb construction. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh viii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION………………………………………………………. ..........i DEDICATION…………………………………………………………. .........ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………… .........iii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………................... ...v TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………............ viii LIST OF TABLES………………….………………………………........…. xix LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………….......…. .xx LIST OF MAPS………………………………………………………... .......xxi LIST OF APPENDICES……………………………………………........…xxii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……………………………………….......….xxiii CHAPTER 1........................................................................................................1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION...........................................................................1 1.0 Background of the study................................................................................1
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