Dagaare

Dagaare is a Mabia language and has two million speakers. The language has been described as a dialect continuum, which includes Waale and Birifor. Following Ethnologue, Dagaare can be subcategorized into three languages. (1) Southern/Central Dagaare spoken mainly in Ghana, (2) Nothern Dagara spoken mainly in Burkina Faso and (3) Dagaari Dioula spoken mainly in Burkina Faso, which has been influenced by the Dioula language. In this article, we refer to the language as Dagaare.

Linguistic classificiation

• Niger-Congo
  • Atlantic-Congo
    • Mabia
      • Mabia Central
        • Mabia Dagaare
          • Dagaare

Tone System

Dagaare is a tone language with a two-level tone system with a downstep high tone. The Dagaare tone has two basic functions, namely a lexical and a grammatical function. Its lexical function concerns differences in lexical semantics, such that differing in tone but not in morphosyntactic form triggers different semantics, as illustrated in (1). Its grammatical function is responsible for cases, in which different tone markings on a segment result in different semantics of that expression. This is shown in (2).

Lexical Function

Grammatical Function

Noun Class System²

Noun Class	Singular Form	Noun Stem	Plural Form
Class I	Singular: [ -Vocal]		Plural: [ -bɔ']
(+human cl.)	pɔ'ɣɔ'   'woman'	pɔ'g-	pɔ'ɣíbɔ'   'women'
Class II	Singular: [ -Vocal]		Plural: [ -rí]
Cl. IIa	Singular: [ -é]		Plural: [ -rí]
	bìé 'child'	bì-	bíírí 'children'
Cl. IIb	Singular: [ -ó]		Plural: [ - rí]
	dùó 'pig'	dò-	dòrí 'pigs'
Cl. IIc	Singular: [ -í]		Plural: [ - rí]
	síɣí 'hut'	síg-	síɣrí 'huts'
Class III	Singular: [ -í]		Plural: [ -Vocal]
Cl. IIIa	Singular: [ -í]		Plural: [ -é]
	gyìlí 'xylophone'	gyìl-	gyìlé 'xylophones'
Cl. IIIb	Singular: [ -í]		Plural: [ -ɔ´]
	pɔ`lí 'path (for rats)'	pɔ`	pɔ`lɔ´ 'paths'
Cl. IIIc	Singular: [ -í]		Plural: [ -á]
	váálí 'rubbish'	váál-	váálá 'rubbish'
Class IV	Singular: [ -rʊʊ]		Plural: [ -rì]
	pírʊʊ 'sheep'	pí-	píírì 'sheep'
Class V	Singular: [ -∅]		Plural: [ -rí]
	túú 'forest'	tùù-	túúrí 'forest'
Class VI	Singular: [ -rì]		Plural: [ -Vocal]
Cl. VIa	Singular: [ -rì]		Plural: [ -è]
	bírì 'seed'	bí-	bíè 'seeds'
Cl. VIb	Singular: [ -rí]		Plural: [ -ó]
	tóórí 'ear'	tóó-	tòbó 'ears'
Cl. VIc	Singular: [ -rí]		Plural: [ -á]
	yàgrí 'cheek'	yàg-	yàɤá 'cheeks'
Class VII	SG: Nasal+Vocal		Pl: Nasal+Vocal
Cl. VIIa	Singular: [ -ní]		Plural: [ -mà]
	gánì 'hide/book'	gán-	gámà 'hides/books'
Cl. VIIb	Singular: [ -mʊ]		Plural: [ -má]
	táamʊ 'bow'	tàn-	támá 'bows'
Cl. VIIc	Singular: [ -ŋé]		Plural: [ -ní]
	bìŋé 'pen'	bìŋ-	bìnní 'pens'
Cl. VIId	Singular: [ -ŋó]		Plural: [ -ní]
	bòŋó 'donkey'	bòŋ-	bònní 'donkeys'
Cl. VIIe	Singular: [ -∅]		Pl: [ -nɛɛ] (types of)
-count plurals	dãã ` 'pito'	dãã `	dãã `nɛɛ 'pito'
Class VIII	Singular: [ -áá]		Plural: [ -í]
	gbíŋgbíláá 'drying spot'	gbígbíl-	gbíŋgbíllí 'drying spots'
Class IX	Singular: [ -ù]		(no plural)
(derived n.)	Dúóù 'climbing'	dó
Class X	(no singular)		Plural: [ -úŋ]
(count class)		bùùl-	búúlúŋ 'porridge'

Pronominal System²

Personal Pronouns

In Dagaare, personal pronouns do not exhibit gender differences. For subject pronouns, there is a distinction between strong and weak personal pronouns. Moreover, there is a distinction between human and non-human forms for third person plural pronouns.

	Subject (Nom)		Object (Acc)
	Weak Form	Strong Form
(human)
1st SG	n	maa	ma
2nd SG	fo	foo	fo
3rd SG	o	onɔ	o
1st PL	te	tenee	te
2nd PL	yɛ	yɛnee	yɛ
3rd PL	ba	bana	ba
(non-human)
3rd PL	a	ana	a

Reflexive Pronouns

Reflexivity is expressed by the words 'mengɛ' or 'mengɛ tɔr' in singular and 'menne' or 'menne tɔr' in plural after any personal pronouns.

Weak reflexive pronouns	Strong reflexive pronouns
n mengɛ (tɔr) "myself"	maa mengɛ "me, myself"
fo mengɛ (tɔr) "yourself"	foo mengɛ "you, yourself"
o mengɛ (tɔr) "him/herself"	onɔ mengɛ "s/he, him/herself"
te menne (tɔr) "ourselves"	tenee menne "we, ourselves"
yɛ menne (tɔr) "yourselves"	yɛnee menne "you, yourselves"
ba menne (tɔr) "themselves"	bana menne "they, themselves"
a menne (tɔr) "themselves"	ana menne "they, themselves"

Reciprocal Pronouns

Reciprocal pronouns in Dagaare consist of the forms tɔ, tɔ soba, taa and taaba. The most common form is taa.

Relative Pronouns

There is no distinction between human and non-human relative pronouns in Dagaare. For both the relative pronoun is nang.

Interrogative Pronouns

Interrogative pronouns are formed by a root like [ bo- ] ('what, which') which combines with a suffix. According to Dakubu (2005), interrogative pronoun roots in Dagaare include also [ yeŋ- ] ('where'), [ ʔaŋ- ] ('who') and [ wʊla- ] ('how many').

bong, boluu	"what"
boo	"which one, which of them"
baboo, babobo	"which of them (humans)"
aboo, abobo	"which of them (non-human)"
ang	"who (singular, human)"
ang mine	"who (plural, human)"

Possessive Pronouns

Possession is expressed by the words toɔr and den in singular and deme in plural, meaning "own", combined with any personal pronoun.

n toɔr, den, deme	"mine, my own"
fo toɔr, den, deme	"yours, you own"
o toɔr, den, deme	"his/hers, his/her own"
te toɔr, den, deme	"ours, our own"
yɛ toɔr, den, deme	"yours, your own"
ba toɔr, den, deme	"theirs, their own (human)"
a toɔr, den, deme	"theirs, their own (non-human)"

Demonstrative Pronouns

Similarly to the personal pronouns, there is a distinction between human and non-human forms for the third person plural pronouns.

nyɛ	"this (one)"
onɔng	"that (one)"
banang	"those (ones) - (human)"
anang	"those (ones) - (non-human)"
lɛ	"like that (one)"
nyɛɛ	"like this (one)"

Indefinite Pronouns

Dagaare does not seem to have indefinite pronouns and rather combines a noun like "person" or "body" with the element kang in order to express indefinites like "somebody" or "someone".

Word Order

The canonical word order of Dagaare is SVO (subject-verb-object). This can be seen in the following examples showing an intransitive clause (6), a transitive clause including an adverb (7) and a ditransitive (8).

Verbal System

The VP in Dagaare consists of a preverbal particle encoding tense, the predicate, and a postverbal particle with a function yet to be fully investigated.

Preverbal Particles

Daagare marks past and future tenses by the use of preverbal particles. Present tense in not marked or lexicalized in this language. These preverbal particles function like auxiliary verbs in Indo-European languages lexicalizing tense and aspectual features.

Contrary to Indo-European languages like English, French and Norwegian, Dagaare exhibits the lexicalization of a habitual marker. While in the Indo-European languages this habitual marker is basically an adverb, in Dagaare it is realized as the preverbal particle mang. This preverbal particle can only occur after the subject, thus it is not an adverb, since adverbs are more flexible in the positions they can potentially occur in within the clause.

Major Particles²

Tense, Aspect, Modal Particles	Dagaare
today (also once upon a time)	da
one day away	zaa
two or more days away	daar
habitual	mang
still, not yet	nang
actually	sorong
once again, as usual	yaa
suddenly, just	deɛ
nonfuture negative	ba
future affix	na
future negative	kong
imperative subjunctive negative	ta
again	là

These preverbal particles are difficult to classify as temporal, aspectual, modal and polar, since the relationship between polarity and tense in the Mabia languages is very tight. This means that a particular preverbal particle can express a positive or negative action in the past (da) or a positive or negative action in the future (na). The na particle for instance does not only mark tense, but also positivity of an action. Its counterpart kong is not simply the negation of an action, but also indicating the tense of this action.

Main Verb

The main verb in Dagaare consists of a verb stem and a suffix. This suffix encodes perfective or imperfective aspect. In this system, the speaker considers an action as either completed or not yet completed, irrespective of whether the action happens in the present or past tense.² There is the verbal suffix form -ng in Dagaare, whose function is to affirm or emphasize the verbal action. This affix is in complementary distribution with the postverbal particle la, also shown in the subsection on this postverbal particle.

Most verb roots in Dagaare are monosyllabic and combine with inflectional affixes. As already mentioned, the main inflectional affixes in Dagaare express aspect. There are then three distinct inflectional affix forms, one imperfective or progressive affix (-ro) and two perfective or completive affixes (-∅, -e). Imperative forms are homophonous with the perfective transitive forms.² An interesting aspect of the Mabia verbal system is that verbs can be classified into pairs of oppositions depending on causativity, transitivity, reversivity and other derivational processes.

Postverbal Particle

According to Bodomo (1997), the postverbal particle la mainly marks factivity, polarity, affirmation or even emphasis.* It usually occurs in postverbal position, but under particular pragmatic constraints it can also occur preverbally. The la particle is in complementary distribution with negative polarity particles.

Besides being in complementary distribution with negative polarity particles, there are four main constraints on the la particle in Dagaare. Firstly, it never occurs after adjuncts postverbally.

Secondly, it occurs before all full NP complements, but it never intervenes between any two full NPs nor follows them.

Thirdly, a pronominal complement must intervene between the verb and the postverbal particle. In this case the affixal form of the particle -ng is attached to the indirect object pronoun ma.

Lastly, under pragmatic circumstances the particle can occur in certain positions within the clause in order to emphasize the role of particular elements. In (16a), the particle occurs after the subject NP and before the verb in order to focus the subject and not the action of the sentence. In (16b) on the other hand the particle occurs postverbally in order to focus the action and not the subject of the clause.

*Note that the postverbal particle is glossed as LA, since its glossing in the literature is not consistent and therefore its syntactic nature is not so clear. We thus propose that the postverbal particle may function as a focus marker, while previous research assumed it to be a factive marker.

Negation

In addition to the preverbal particles above, negation is also expressed by preverbal particles. In Dagaare, negation is related to mood and aspect, such that choice of the negated particle varies between the perfective and the imperfective as well as with regard to clause types.

Negation of a declarative

In declarative clauses, the particle bá expresses negation and occurs between the subject and the predicate. Negative preverbal particles are in complementary distribution with the focus marker lá, shown in the contrast in (17).

Negation involving future

If negation should refer to an action or event in the future, the particle kòng is used.

Negation of an imperative

In order to express negation in an imperative, the preverbal particle tá is used instead.

Negation and Focus

Since the negative particle bá and the focus marker là are in complementary distribution, there is a special form náá that marks both, negation and focus.
This particle, however, has the identical distribution than its counterpart là with respect to focus constructions in Dagaare.

Question Formation

There are two types of questions in Dagaare. Usually, questions are formed by a question word in the sentence-initial position, but in a few cases there is either a question marker that has to occur in sentence-final position or the question word can appear in situ.²

Ex situ

The Dagaare bong questions correspond to wh-questions in English, but since most of the question words in Dagaare start with the letter b, it makes no sense to refer to them as wh-questions as well and therefore one can refer to them as bong questions² . These questions exhibit the question word ex situ and vary according to its Q-element.

In some cases, the Q-element is followed not only by the particle lá, but additionally by the complementizer kà. This might indicate that the Q-element occupies the specifier position and the complementizer appears in the head position of the CP. The particle lá occurs in between both elements and might mark focus, in this case verbal focus.

Lastly, multiple questions are highly marked in Dagaare. In these cases, one Q-element occurs ex situ and the other one(s) in situ.

In situ

Examples for a question that do not exhibit the question word ex situ are the so-called bee questions, which are known as yes-/no- questions in languages like English. These questions only require a yes- or no-answer instead of a more complex and informative answer. Bee is here the particular question marker, which has to appear obligatorily as the final element of the clause. These questions can express contrastive focus.

Besides this type of question, there are cases, in which the question word can also appear in situ. These questions might correspond to echo questions.

Long distance extraction

In Dagaare the question word can cross a clause-boundary, which gives rise to long distance extraction. The following example illustrates the potential positions within the clause, in which the question word can occur. Note that only in (28b) a focus marker occurs, which varies from la to na. In (28a) the two complementizer indicate the clause boundaries across the question word has been moved.