Gender and person agreement in Cicipu discourse A dissertation submitted to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Stuart John McGill September 2009 I, Stuart John McGill, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Abstract The Cicipu language (Kainji, Benue-Congo) of northwest Nigeria has the kind of robust noun class system characteristic of Benue-Congo languages – GENDER agreement is found on a great many agreement targets inside and outside the noun phrase. For a number of these targets, gender agreement is in competition with a separate paradigm, that of PERSON agreement. The dissertation focuses on the distribution of this alternation with respect to subject prefixes, object enclitics, and pronouns, based on a corpus of 12,000 clauses of spoken language. The alternation proves to be complex to describe, involving a constellation of lexical, phonological, morphosyntactic, semantic and discourse-pragmatic factors. In particular, both animacy and topicality are CONDITIONS (Corbett 2006) on agreement. While inanimate or animal participants normally trigger gender agreement, if they are topics then they may trigger person agreement. Likewise while human nouns typically trigger person agreement, this is not always the case, and gender agreement is more likely if the referent is of incidental importance to the discourse. Furthermore it is argued that this alternation is sensitive to discourse topic (e.g. Dooley 2007) rather than sentence topic (e.g. Lambrecht 1994). Both gender and person subject prefixes are ambiguous agreement markers according to the typology of Bresnan and Mchombo (1987) and Siewierska (1999), since both can take part in grammatical or anaphoric agreement. Thus the Cicipu data supports Culy's (2000) contention that topicality is an independent dimension for the classification of agreement markers, rather than derivative of the grammatical vs. anaphoric agreement distinction, and leads us to re-evaluate the common assumption that dependent person markers (Siewierska 2004) cannot vary with respect to their discourse function. Since Cicipu is otherwise undescribed, a major part of the dissertation consists of a phonological and grammatical sketch. 3 Acknowledgements Huge thanks are due to Peter Austin, my supervisor. From the beginning he has been a source of good advice and encouragement, with an amazing knowledge both of theoretical linguistics and of data from throughout the world's languages. He has been patient with my lack of progress or understanding, without neglecting to administer a kick up the backside when needed. Perhaps above all I am grateful that he has been so enthusiastic about the Cicipu language – it is impossible for a PhD student to overstate the amount of encouragement that this attitude brings, when often there seems to be no- one else interested! Thanks too to the other members of my committee, Friederike Lüpke and Lutz Marten. It has been great to have specialists on both West African and Bantu languages who were willing to read and comment on various papers or chapters. I was also able to make many improvements because of informal discussions with them. I am very grateful to the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Academic Programme for their financial support during the writing of this thesis, in the form of a PhD Bursary. Additionally, two field trips to Nigeria were made possible by grants from the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (2006, FTG0102) and from the University of London Central Research Fund (2008). I would also like to thank my Cicipu consultants, in particular Markus Mallam Yabani who threw himself into this work with enthusiasm. Where there is insight into the language in this thesis it is often as much due to him as to me. I am also grateful to Mohammed Musa, especially for arranging interviews with Akula elders and for his Herculean transcription efforts. My Cicipu language teachers Musa Danjuma Mai Unguwa and his brother Ibrahim generously sacrificed their farm work to help me. Others who assisted with language work include Amos Bako Timothy, Ayuba Sani, Ishiaku Ibrahim, Mohammed Mallam, Sani Ɗantanyi, Ishaya Audu, and Makawo Madugu. Many others from Galadima and the surrounding villages not only helped me to understand their language, but also treated me with kindness and offered friendship beyond the requirements of hospitality. Special thanks are due to Ɗanjuma Galadima, the Mai Unguwa of Bazama, and Baba Yabani Galadima – for allowing me to live with them in their village, and for their advocacy of the work I was doing. While carrying out fieldwork in Nigeria I had the help of many people from 4 various local institutions. I received a great deal of assistance from CAPRO members, especially Joshua Kadon, who twice helped me obtain a visa. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with Israel Wade, whose enthusiasm for Cicipu is inspirational. I hope we get the chance to go back together. Reuben and Victoria Acheson's friendship and hospitality were more than I could have dreamed of. Many others helped me in various ways, including Bro Yusuf and Mama Ezra, Bro James, Bro Ademola, Sister Joke, Sister Stella, and not least Bro Ali and Sister Bose Okpo. Professor Sati Umaru Fwatshak and Dr John Nengel from the University of Jos kindly provided letters of introduction and have offered to archive the language materials resulting from this project. Professor Doris Bozimo of Ahmadu Bello University went out of her way to photocopy Mathews' Historical and Anthropological Report on the Acipu for me. I would like to thank the Kebbi State Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs for writing me a further letter of introduction. I am especially grateful to the Womo of Korisino, whose support made it possible to carry out this research. I have many reasons to be grateful for the hospitality and advice (both linguistic and practical) of several long-term linguists and missionaries in Nigeria. Liz and David Crozier have been of enormous personal encouragement and administrative help to me, right from the conception of this project in 2003 until the present day. I'd like to thank David especially for sharing his data and thoughts on Cishingini and its relationship with Cicipu. I hope that this thesis will be as useful to others as his was to me. David Heath has also helped me in numerous ways, but in particular by generously allowing me the use of his house and office in Tungan Magajiya. Roger Blench has shared his work, time, and expertise on Kainji languages, as well as being quick to comment on and improve any documents I have sent him. Just finding someone else in the world with an active interest in Kainji languages would have been nice in itself, but Roger's enthusiasm and his concern for these languages and their documentation has been a great motivation for me as well. I am grateful to Steve and Sonia Dettweiler for their hospitality, and for sharing their thoughts and language data. Mike Rueck lent me his brand-new GPS which proved invaluable both for mapping the Acipu area and for allowing me a certain amount of independent travel through the head-high guineacorn! Finally, I benefited from the hospitality of the Guessler and Fuller families in Tungan 5 Magajiya on several occasions. I have been fortunate to study at one of the best places for learning Hausa in the world. Barry Burgess and Abba Tijani have not only been exemplary language teachers, they also listened with patience to my parochial and often wide-of-the-mark questions about Hausa grammar and its influence on Cicipu. If it were not for Ivan Lowe's inspirational teaching at SIL UK, I probably would have never taken up linguistics. Along the way I've been privileged to learn from many others; with respect to this thesis, my understanding of topicality has benefited greatly from the teaching and writing of Bob Dooley. Many other friends, colleagues, and linguists have had direct or indirect input into this dissertation through the conversations and discussions I had with them, or the materials they have been kind enough to provide me with. These include Mary Chambers, Sophie Salffner, Pete Budd, Chaithra Puttaswamy, Serge Sagna, Lameen Souag, Oliver Bond, Monik Charette, Eli Timan, James MacDonell, Becky Paterson, Greville Corbett, Birgit Hellwig, Frank Seifart, and Ludwig Gerhardt, as well as everyone else from R301. Bernard Howard, Tom Castle, and David Nathan from ELAR deserve particular thanks for their help with electrical and audio equipment. And a big thank you to Alison Kelly for sanity-restoring chats and all her administrative help, and also to her predecessor Zara Pybus. I'd like to thank my friends in Didcot, especially Graham, Gavin, Elli, Eileen, Jill and Andrew for some great times over the last few years while not writing this thesis. Having friends like this to come back to made the daily commute bearable. And of course Mum, Dad and Fiona for your forbearance, love, and timely mini-breaks! Finally merci beaucoup to my wife Kyoko for her encouragement, and for keeping me in my place by laughing at my attempts at prose! This thesis is dedicated to her. I can think of no better way to round up than to echo Ishaya Audu's prayer following his own contribution to the documentation of Cicipu. Wan Kungwa tugwede vu ana yãawana tu a wumpa ulenji. Ana tiyãana kampa komisooni, naha ivɔ n katĩi kaavu iri yina tidamana íyyũu yi ka'albarka a ahula haYeesu. Tipata vu põ iri yina tiyãana yina yiluba daidai, naha ivɔ n katĩi kaavu ísungusanu.