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A Grammar of Jamsay / Jeffrey Heath.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Mouton Grammar Library [MGL] ; 45Publisher: Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Mouton, [2008]Copyright date: ©2008Description: 1 online resource (735 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9783110201130
  • 9783110207224
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 496.3 496/.3
LOC classification:
  • PL8139.95.J35H43 2008 PL8139.95.J35
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
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
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.

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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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.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Feb 2023)