A Grammar of Jamsay / / Jeffrey Heath.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• VerfasserIn: Heath, Jeffrey,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter Mouton, , [2008]; ©2008
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Language: English
• Series: Mouton Grammar Library [MGL] , 45
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (735 p.)
• 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
• 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.

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.