Documenting the Ikpana interrogative system

This article provides a comprehensive treatment of the interrogative system of Ikpana (ISO 639-3: lgq), an endangered language spoken in the southeastern part of Ghana’s Volta region. The article features a description and analysis of both the morphosyntax and intonation of questions in the language. Polar questions in Ikpana are associated with dedicated prosodic patterns and may be segmentally marked. As for wh- interrogatives, Ikpana allows for optional wh- movement. Interrogative expressions may appear clause-internally in their base-generated positions or in the left periphery followed by one of two optionally droppable particles with distinct syntactic properties. In this way, wh- movement structures are either focus-marked constructions or cleft structures depending on the accompanying particle. We identify an interesting wh- movement asymmetry – unlike all other wh- movement structures, ‘how’ questions may not be formed via the focus-marked or cleft strategy. We document a number of other attested wh- structures in the language, including long-distance wh- movement, partial wh- movement, long-distance wh- in-situ, and multiple wh- questions. We argue that by allowing our documentation efforts to be shaped and guided by theoretically driven research questions, we reach deeper levels of description than would have been possible if approached from a purely descriptive-documentary perspective.

Static locative expressions in Amharic

This paper describes the semantics of static locative expressions in Amharic, particularly the variety spoken in Godʒdʒam. The analysis shows that the semantic category of a site subsumed under Path is exclusively expressed by an adposition. The adpositions can be specific and general locatives. The specific locatives show a specific type of topological relation (for instance, verticality as in tatʃtʃ ‘below, under,’ horizontality as in fit ‘front,’ containment as in wɨst’ ‘in’) between figure and ground entities, but not the general locatives. Besides, static positional verbs encode the conflation of the fact of locatedness with a manner of the positioning of a figure. Based on Talmy’s Motion event typology, the present study has identified that Amharic uses a satellite-framed pattern in static locative constructions exclusively. Moreover, based on Ameka & Levinson’s typology of locative predication, Amharic can be classified under type Ia where a language uses a dummy verb in basic locative construction.

Action nominalization: a view from Esahie (Kwa)

The paper provides a comprehensive account of the derivation of action nominals in Esahie, a Ghanaian language of the Tano subgroup (Kwa, Niger-Congo) which has been undocumented thus far, especially as far as morphosyntactic phenomena are concerned. The aim of the research is threefold: to contribute to language documentation, to provide a systematic description and analysis of the morphosyntactic properties of Esahie action nominals, and to offer a typological assessment of these constructions. We argue that action nominalization in Esahie primarily involves a composite strategy: a morpho-syntactic operation, invariably involving affixation, and a concomitant prosodic operation in the form of a change in tonal melody. As far as the derivation of action nominals is concerned, it appears that in Esahie, tone raising is not simply a phonologically-conditioned prosodic effect, but plays a morphemic role. Further, depending on the arity of the base verb, nominalization may or may not be coupled with incorporation of the internal argument, which derives a form of synthetic compounding, as in the English truck-driving type. Based on the seminal works by Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 1993. Nominalizations. London: Routledge; Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 2006. Nominalizations. In Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, vol. 8, 652–659. Boston: Elsevier, the current work argues that Esahie belongs to the possessive-incorporating subtype of the incorporating languages.

Acquisition of doubly articulated stops among Ga-speaking children

This study investigates the acquisition of labio-velar stops by Ga-speaking children in Ghana. Such stops were elicited in initial, intervocalic, and pre-lateral positions through a picture naming task. Sixty Ga-dominant and Ga-English children at 5-, 61/2-, and 8-years of age were tested. All age groups showed some difficulty with the doubly articulated stops, but this was relative to voicing, phonological environment, age, and input. Performance on the voiceless labio-velar stop was better than on the voiced labio-velar stop, and better in intervocalic position than in word-initial and pre-lateral positions. Older children performed better than younger children and Ga-dominant children better than Ga-English children. Performance was better when children did not receive a prompt than when they did. Analysis of modifications reveals frequent processes of simplification to labial singleton stops, some voicing changes, and the occurrence of processes of vowel insertion between the stops and /l/. These findings are discussed in terms of universals of speech sound acquisition, the role of input, and the influence of language-specific factors on children’s performance.

Noun modifiers and the n preposition in Siwi Berber (Egypt)

The three most common strategies used to modify a head noun, namely through a possessive, an adjective and a relative clause construction feature in Siwi the use of the preposition n. Its presence is obligatory in the possessive constructions, but only present before an adjective or a relative clause in some contexts, depending on the level of restriction that the speaker wants to place on the head noun. The aim of the article is to describe the use and function of n in all three contexts of noun modification in Siwi and present supplementary data that helps the understanding of the global function of this preposition.

The expression of modality in Logoori

This study presents a theoretically informed description of the expression of modality in Logoori (Luyia; Bantu). We document verbal and non-verbal modal expressions in Logoori, and show how these expressions fit into proposed typologies of modal systems (Kratzer, Angelika. 1981. The notional category of modality. In Hans-Jurgen Eikmeyer & Hannes Rieser (eds.), Words, worlds, and contexts: New approaches in word semantics, 38–74. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, Kratzer, Angelika. 1991. Modality. In Armin von Stechow & Dieter Wunderlich (eds.), Semantics: An international handbook of contemporary research, 639–650. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter; van der Auwera, Johan & Vladimir Plungian. 1998. Modality’s semantic map. Linguistic Typology 2. 79–124. https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.1998.2.1.79; Nauze, Fabrice. 2008. Modality in typological perspective. Amsterdam: Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation PhD thesis). We show that Logoori’s modal system raises some interesting questions regarding the typology and theoretical analysis of modality and its relationship to other kinds of meaning. Our study contributes to the nascent but growing research on modal systems cross linguistically by adding data from an understudied Bantu language.