A Grammar of Jamsay / / Jeffrey Heath.
Jamsay is the largest-population language among some twenty Dogon languages in Mali, West Africa. This is the first comprehensive grammar of any Dogon language, including a full tonology. The language is verb-final, with subject agreement on the verb and with no other case-marking. Its most striking...
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Superior document: | Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1 |
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VerfasserIn: | |
Place / Publishing House: | Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter Mouton, , [2008] ©2008 |
Year of Publication: | 2008 |
Language: | English |
Series: | Mouton Grammar Library [MGL] ,
45 |
Online Access: | |
Physical Description: | 1 online resource (735 p.) |
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Other title: | Frontmatter -- Contents -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Sketch -- 3 Phonology -- 4 Nominal, pronominal, and adjectival -- morphology -- 5 Nominal and adjectival compounds -- 6 Noun phrase structure -- 7 Coordination -- 8 Postpositions and adverbials -- 9 Verbal derivation -- 10 Verbal inflection -- 11 VP and predicate structure -- 12 Comparatives -- 13 Focalization and interrogation -- 14 Relativization -- 15 Verb (VP) chaining and adverbial clauses -- 16 Conditional constructions -- 17 Complement and purposive clauses -- 18 Anaphora -- 19 Grammatical pragmatics -- 20 Dialects -- Backmatter |
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Summary: | Jamsay is the largest-population language among some twenty Dogon languages in Mali, West Africa. This is the first comprehensive grammar of any Dogon language, including a full tonology. The language is verb-final, with subject agreement on the verb and with no other case-marking. Its most striking feature is the morphosyntactically triggered use of stem-wide tone-contour overlays on nouns, verbs, and adjectives. All stems have a lexical tone contour such as H[igh], L[ow]-H, HL, or LHL with at least one H-tone. An exam of tone overlay is tone-dropping to stem-wide all-L. This is used for Perfective verbs (in the presence of a focalized constituent), and for a noun or adjective before an adjective. It is also used to mark the head NP in a relative clause (the head NP is not extracted, so this is the only direct indication of head NP status). The verb in a relative clause is morphologically a participle, agreeing with the head NP in humanness and number, rather than with the subject. "Intonation" is used grammatically. For example, NP conjunction 'X and Y' is expressed as X Y, without a conjunction, but with "dying-quail" intonation on both conjuncts. |
Format: | Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web. |
ISBN: | 9783110207224 9783110238570 9783110238457 9783110636970 9783110742961 9783110212129 9783110212136 9783110209457 |
ISSN: | 0933-7636 ; |
DOI: | 10.1515/9783110207224 |
Access: | restricted access |
Hierarchical level: | Monograph |
Statement of Responsibility: | Jeffrey Heath. |