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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I I 77-257 MORSE, Mary Lynn Alice, 1953- A SKETCH OF THE PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY OF BOBO (UPPER VOLTA). Columbia University, Ph.D., 1976 Anthropology, cultural Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A SKETCH OF THE PHONDLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY BOBO (UPPER UOLTA) Mary Lynn Alice Morse Submitted in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Political Science Columbia University 1976 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT A SKETCH OF THE PHONOLOGY AMD MORPHOLOGY OF BOBO (UPPER VOLTA) Mary Lynn Alice Mcrse While basically following the American structuralist tradition for the description of languages, this dissertation differs from the strictly Bloomfieldian model because of con­ siderable emphasis on historical (diachronic) and socio- linguistic data and techniques. The Bobo language of the Upper Volta is shown to be both linguistically innovative and archaic. Considerable data is shown illustrating the relationship of Bobo with cognate Mande languages. A dis­ cussion of the dialects within Bobo itself is also given. The Introduction discusses problems involved with the classification of Bobo within the Mande group, previously published materials and literature, and an ethnographic sketch of the Bobo people themselves, as this serves to eluci­ date some socio-linguistic questions included in later chapters. The phonemes of Bobo are divided into segmental (con­ sonants and vowels) and supersegmental (tone, juncture and terminal contours.) Long vowels are interpreted as sequences of identical vowels, two degrees of nasalization (primary and secondary) are discussed and stress is treated as a feature of tone and intonation and not phonemic in the lang­ uage. /kp/ and /gb/ are discussed in light of historical data as well as their status in Bobo today. The following phonological units larger than phonemes are Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. postulated: the syllable, the phonological morpheme, the phonological word, the pause group and the utterance. Criteria for the definition of each unit are given and dis­ cussed. Finally, the assimilation of foreign loan words (mostly from French and Bambara) into Bobo is discussed, dealing with such topics of area of vocabulary affected and phonemic shape of loan words. Three tonal levels (high, mid and low) are set up in Bobo. Tonal glides on short syllables are interpreted as sequences of two tones occupying the same domain. The func­ tion of tone is phonemic, morphological and syntactic. Almost all Bobo words are assigned a base (lexical) tone, with the ex­ ception of several enclitics. The many and varying causes of tone ablaut (perturbation)are discussed. The following morphological processes are found in Bobo; affixation (suffixation), re;ilacives (involving vowels and tone), reduplication (partial and complete) and compounding. Examples of each type are given and discussed. The word classes (parts of speech) are discussed. While it appears that historically, nouns, verbs and adjectives were once one large word class historically, the situation has changed sufficiently to warrant establishing a separate class for them today. Noun pluralization in Bobo is both varied and complex. Evidence is given to support the hypothesis that noun plurals represent the vestiges of a very old noun class system marked by suffixes, which shows historical relationships between Bobo and other branches of the Niger-Kordofanian language family. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The verb morphology of Bobo is discussed and several sub-classes of verbs are listed. Adjectives are only tentatively established as a separate part of speech. Morphologically they resemble both verbs and nouns. Other word classes established and discussed are: numerals, deictic words and demonstratives, postpositions, conjunctions, adverbs, time words and tense and aspect markers. These word classes are established through the use of morpho­ logical criteria only. The syntactic or distribution classes of Bobo are quite different. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. V ■Mopti Bondiogoro OuahigouyQ' W HITj^ VOLTA UPPER VOLTA 'Ncuna Ouagadougou. :S'-iBoma.# A- ) t i ^ S t j ■Sara iGadema.^v l-rrwr?/1 ‘ ; llSfl ^ K '- v ^ l^ 060 Dioulasso(Tounouma) UPPER VOLTA T H E BOBO ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TASLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION 1.1 The Language 1 1.1.1 Classification 2 1.1.2 Published Materials and Literature A 1.2 The People 5 II. THE SEGMENTAL PHONEMES 2.1 Consonants 17 2.2 Uouels 27 2.3 Rare or Extra-Systemic Phonemes 30 2.A Evidence For Phonemic Contrasts 30 2.5 Interpretation of Suspect Segments and Sequences 33 2.6 Distribution of Phonemes 53 2.7 Frequencies of Phonemic Occurrences 67 III. THE SUPERSEGMENTAL PHONEMES 3.1 Tone 79 3.2 Juncture and Phonemic Concatenators 95 3.3 Terminal Contours (Intonation) 98 3,A Interpretation of Suspect Segments and Features 100 3.A.1 Long (Lengthened) Uouels 100 3.A.2 Nasalization 105 3.A.3 Stress 110 IU. THE PHONOLOGY OF LARGER SEGMENTS A . l The Syllable 112 A. 2 The Phonological Morpheme 11A A. 3 The Phonological Word 115 A . A The Pause Group 119 A. 5 The Utterance 120 A. 6 Phonological Exceptions and Irregularities 121 A. 7 The Assimilation of Loan Words 12A I/. MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES 5.1 Affixation 132 5S2 Replacivas 1A3 5.3 Reduplication 1A6 5.A Compounding UI. WORD CLASSES 6.1 Nouns 156 6.2 l/erbs 172 6.3 Adjectives 177 6.A Numerals 180 6.5 Deictic Words and Demonstratives 183 iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Page 6.6 Postpositions 188 6.7 Conjunctions 191 6.8 Adverbs 191 6.9 Time Words 192 6.10 Tense and Aspect Markers 193 BI8LI0GRAPHY 195 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF TABLES Table Page I. The Distribution of Consonants in Syllables, Morphemes and Words 57 II. Vowels Occurring as Separate Syllables 58 III. Distribution of Vowels in Final Position 59 IV. Distribution of Vowels in Medial Position 60 V. The Distribution of Vowels Occurring Singly 61 VI. The Distribution Df Vowels in Clusters 62 VII. Distribution of Long Vowels in Final Position 6k VIII. Distribution of Vowels in Clusters in Final Position 65 IX. Possible Consonant-Vawel Combinations Within a Single Syllable 66 X. Consonant Phonemes in Morpheme Initial Position 67 XI. Distribution of Consonants in Morphemes of a CVCV pattern 70 XII. Frequency of Consonants in C^ and C2 Position 72 XIII. Lexical Count of Phoneme Frequencies 75 v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 . CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 The Language. The immediate purpose of this study is to present a description in the American structuralist style of the phonology and morphology of the Bobo language of the Upper Volta (Bnbo-da), a Msnde language spoken in the western part of this former French colony in West Africa. This uork is based on material gathered during two periods of fieldwork in and around the city of Bobo-Dioulasso, a major city located in the southern part of the Bobo area. The first period was from November, 1961 through October, 1962 and the second uas from Oecember, 1968 through Play, 1969. The informants for the first psriod wars Messrs. Roussa Sanon, 28 years of ags at that time, from the vil­ lage of Sala, 28 kilometers north of 8obo-Dioulasso, and ChriBtian Sanon, 19, from the village of Tounouma, adjacent to Bobo-Dioulasso.