Aspects of the grammar of Buli, a Gur language of northern Ghana

Abstract

This thesis describes Buli (Gur, Niger-Congo), covering aspects of its phonology, morphology, and syntax. The description focuses on language-internal facts but, wherever possible, draws on typological/comparative facts as supporting evidence. The primary source of my data is a corpus of recorded and transcribed naturalistic spontaneous texts, supplemented with elicited data. Chapter 1 provides the extra-linguistic and methodological contexts of the description, discussing socio-cultural aspects of the Bulisa community and factors that have influenced their society. Topics covered include the name of the language, genetic classification, dialects/varieties, estimated speaker population, and language contact. Chapter 2 describes Buli phonology, focusing on the sound inventory, syllable structure, phonotactic constraints, tone, and relevant phonological processes. These aspects are crucial for understanding the subsequent chapters. Chapter 3 discusses nouns and their classes, focusing on their segmental features, semantic content, agreement patterns, and functions. The chapter also examines pronouns and other nominal elements that fulfil diverse functions, including marking definiteness, reflexivity, reciprocity, and interrogativity. Chapter 4 describes the functions of various morphological elements, including quantifiers, property nouns, adverbial modifiers, ideophones, interjections, coordinators, and focus markers. Chapter 5 focuses on verbs, examining their morphology and functional types. Verbs have limited inflectional morphology and a handful of them exhibit suppletion. They also possess a system of evolved extensions, which are currently unproductive, and exhibit grammatical rather than lexical tone. Chapter 6 examines the grammatical categories of tense, aspect, mood, and negation. In addition to tone, the coding of these categories involves a combination of grammatical morphemes and lexical items at different stages of grammaticalisation. Chapter 7 discusses simple clauses and question constructions, focusing on their syntactic constituents and functional types. Simple clauses discussed include verbal clauses (e.g. existential/locative clauses and the possessive clause) and verbless clauses (e.g. identificational and presentational clauses). Polar, alternative, and content questions are also covered in this section. Chapter 8 explores spatial and temporal relations in Buli, showing the sources and lexical semantics of the elements that code these two domains. Native body part nouns and relational verbs, and loanwords typically code spatial and temporal relations. Chapter 9 examines multi-verb constructions, focusing on serial verb constructions (SVCs). The morpho-syntactic properties and functional types of Buli SVCs are discussed, revealing properties of Buli SVCs that reflect widely attested cross-linguistic features and their idiosyncrasies. Chapter 10 discusses inter-clausal relations, focusing on the linking strategies and semantic implications of adverbial clause constructions and coordinated constructions. This section also describes constructions that express reported speech and thought. Chapter 11 deals with information structure, examining the means of marking elements of sentences as the focus or topic. Chapter 12 provides final remarks on this thesis, summarising the goal of this work, the scope and approach to description compared to previous research on the language, and the significance of this thesis.