A Grammar of Kusaal Agolle Dialect David Eddyshaw i Contents Preface.................................................................................................................... viii Abbreviations............................................................................................................. x Interlinear glossing...................................................................................................xi Transcription conventions........................................................................................xii Sources.................................................................................................................... xiii Other studies of Kusaal............................................................................................xv References/Bibliography.........................................................................................xvi 1 Kusaal and the Kusaasi..............................................................................................1 1.1 The Kusaasi people.............................................................................................1 1.2 The Kusaal language...........................................................................................4 1.2.1 Status...........................................................................................................4 1.2.2 Dialects........................................................................................................5 1.2.3 Related languages........................................................................................6 1.2.4 Grammatical sketch...................................................................................11 Morphophonemics....................................................................................................... 23 2 Preliminaries............................................................................................................ 23 2.1 Rule order.........................................................................................................23 2.2 Morae, syllables and stress...............................................................................23 2.3 Free and bound words......................................................................................24 2.4 Word division.................................................................................................... 25 3 Segments................................................................................................................. 28 3.1 Consonants........................................................................................................28 3.2 Vowels............................................................................................................... 31 3.2.1 Agolle vowel breaking................................................................................33 3.2.2 Nasalisation...............................................................................................34 3.2.3 Glottalisation..............................................................................................35 3.2.4 Diphthongs.................................................................................................37 3.3 Traditional orthography....................................................................................38 4 Tones........................................................................................................................ 40 4.1 Tonemes............................................................................................................40 4.2 Toneme delinking..............................................................................................43 5 Word segmental structure.......................................................................................46 5.1 Apocope............................................................................................................ 46 5.1.1 Superscript notation..................................................................................49 5.1.2 Predictability of Long Forms......................................................................52 5.2 Roots, stems and flexions..................................................................................54 5.3 Root alternations...............................................................................................57 5.3.1 CV~CVV~CVC...........................................................................................57 5.3.2 CVVC~CVC................................................................................................64 5.4 Consonant cluster assimilation.........................................................................65 5.5 Deletion of *g with vowel fusion.......................................................................70 5.6 Diphthongisation before *-ya *-gʋ *-kkʋ *-ŋŋʋ..................................................73 5.7 Vowel length constraints...................................................................................76 5.8 Apocope-blocking..............................................................................................77 ii 6 Word tonal structure................................................................................................78 6.1 Tone Patterns....................................................................................................78 6.2 Nominals...........................................................................................................80 6.2.1 Pattern H....................................................................................................81 6.2.1.1 Tonal effects of deleted morae............................................................82 6.2.1.2 Subpattern HL....................................................................................83 6.2.2 Pattern L....................................................................................................83 6.2.3 Pattern O....................................................................................................85 6.2.4 Noun prefixes.............................................................................................86 6.3 Verbs................................................................................................................. 87 6.3.1 Pattern H....................................................................................................87 6.3.2 Pattern LO..................................................................................................89 6.4 Particles............................................................................................................ 90 6.5 Tone in derivation.............................................................................................91 7 External sandhi........................................................................................................ 93 7.1 Prosodic clitics..................................................................................................93 7.1.1 Long Forms in clause adjuncts..................................................................97 7.2 Liaison words....................................................................................................98 7.2.1 Vowel quality changes..............................................................................102 7.2.2 Toneme changes......................................................................................106 7.2.3 The pronoun ya before liaison..................................................................110 7.3 M spreading....................................................................................................111 7.3.1 Fixed L tonemes.......................................................................................113 7.4 L spreading.....................................................................................................114 7.5 Segmental contact phenomena.......................................................................117 7.5.1 Consonants..............................................................................................117 7.5.2 Vowels......................................................................................................118 Morphology................................................................................................................ 121 8 Noun flexion........................................................................................................... 121 8.1 Noun classes...................................................................................................121 8.2 Remodelled combining forms.........................................................................124 8.3 Noun paradigms..............................................................................................125 8.3.1 a|ba class..................................................................................................126 8.3.1.1 ba singular........................................................................................129 8.3.2 ga|sɛ class.................................................................................................129 8.3.3 gɔ|dɛ class.................................................................................................132 8.3.4 rɛ|a+ class.................................................................................................135 8.3.4.1 lɛ singular..........................................................................................137