Gurene

Guren​ɛ is a Mabia language and is spoken in Ghana, Togo and Burkina Faso. Guren​ɛ is spoken by one million speakers. In Ghana, it is spoken in the north west around the town of Bolga. Gurenɛ is one dialect of the Farefari language besides four other dialects, which are Taln, Nabt, Boone and Nankani. All dialects show variation at the phonological, lexical and morphosyntactic level.¹

Linguistic classificiation

• Niger-Congo
  • Atlantic-Congo
    • Mabia
      • Mabia Central
        • Mabia Mid-Central
          • Guren​ɛ

Tone System

Guren​ɛ marks two level tones, High and Low. Tone changes in this language have both an lexical and an grammatical impact on the semantics of a particular word.¹

Lexical Function

Grammatical Function

In the following example, all elements are the same segmentally, but the tone difference of the preverbal particle wa is responsible for different meanings. With a low tone the particle expresses future tense, and with a high tone it expresses aspect.²

Noun Class System¹

Gender	Classes	Suffixes	Examples	Gloss
i	1/2	a/-ba	pɔɤa/pɔɤəba	"wife/wives"
ii	3/4	-ka/-sı	pɔka/pɔɤəsı	"woman/women"
iii	5/6	-di/-a	yire/yɛa	"house(s)"
iv	7/8	-kʊ/-tʊ	dʊkɔ/dʊɤərɔ	"pot(s)"
v	9/10	-bʊ/-i	laɤahɔ/liɤəri	"money"
vi	3/2	-ka/-ba	nayiga/nayigəba	"thieves"
vii	7/4	-kʊ/-si	nŭʔo/nŭʔŭsi	"hand(s)"
v/iv	9/8	-bʊ/-tʊ	kaam/katɔ	"oil(s)"
vi/iv	11/8	-la/-tʊ	pugula/pugəto	"girl(s)"
iv/v	7/10	-kʊ/i	kʊʔʊŋɔ/kĩ?ĩnĩ	"gu"

Pronominal System¹

Personal Pronouns

Person	Subject/Possessor	Object	Emphatic
	SG	PL	SG	PL	SG	PL
1st	ma/n	tu	ma	tu	mam	tumam
2nd	fu	ya	fu	ya	fum	yamam
3rd	a	ba	e	ba	eŋa	bamam

Emphatic Pronouns

Emphatic pronouns in Guren​ɛ are allowed in focus positions, while the other personal pronouns are not. In (3a) the emphatic pronoun is followed by the focus marker ti and in (3b) by the focus marker n. Emphatic pronouns are used in an exclusiveness context, such that speakers use these to indicate that only one thing is true and not the other.

Reciprocal Pronouns

To express reciprocity, the lexical marker taaba is used, which occurs after clausal constructions.

Reflexive Pronouns

The reflexive pronouns in Gurenɛ are formed by a personal pronoun to which the reflexive morphem -miŋa in singular and -misi in plural attach. In contrast to other Mabia languages, the reflexive markers in Gurenɛ are sensitive to number, such that there exist two forms for each number singular and plural, while in Buli and Dagbani for instance there is only one reflexive morphem for both numbers. The example in (5) shows both reflexive morphems.

Person	Reflexive Marker	SG	Reflexive Pronoun	Reflexive Marker	PL	Reflexive Pronoun
1st	-miŋa	n	nmiŋa	-misi	tu	tumisi
2nd	-miŋa	fu	fumiŋa	-misi	ya	yamisi
3rd	-miŋa	a	amiŋa	-misi	ba	bamisi

Relative Pronouns

There exist two relative pronouns, which are ti and the particle n. In contrast to other Mabia languages like Dagbani, the relative pronouns in Guren​ɛ are not sensitive to number and do not make a distinction with regard to animacy. The relative pronoun n relativizes subject elements, whereas the particle ti relativizes objects. This is illustrated in (6).

Interrogative Pronouns

Interrogative Pronouns in Guren​ɛ can appear either ex situ or in situ. In (7) and (9), the interrogative pronoun appears ex situ, while in (8) and (10) the interrogative occurs in situ.

Demonstrative Pronouns

In Guren​ɛ the demonstrative pronouns reflect the noun class system, such that each demonstrative pronoun refers to a single noun class.

Number	Guren​ɛ	Gloss
SG	ina(CL1)	that/this
	kana (CL4)	that/this
	dina (CL5)	that/this
	kuna (CL7)	that/this
PL	bana (CL2)	these/those
	sina (CL4)	these/those
	tuna (CL8)	these/those
	buna (CL9)	these/those

Word Order

Guren​ɛ has a SVO word order. In (11), an intransitive clause is shown, in (12) a transitive and in (13) a ditransitive clause, each demonstrating the strict word order SVO.

Verb System

The VP in Gurenɛ consists of preverbal particles encoding aspect, tense, negation, imperative and conditional, the main verb, and postverbal particles, which also encode aspect and tense, but also focus.

Following Atintono (2011), the order of particles within the VP is strictly organized and can be described as in (14). Note that the second postverbal particle not only marks focus, but can also be used in order to mark aspect such as affirmative, completive and directional, respectively.

In Gurenɛ, it is possible to have more than one aspectual preverbal particle in the clause and in these cases the order of aspectual particles is not fixed. On the other hand, it is not possible to have a combination of pre- and postverbal particles from every category listed in (14) in one clause. According to Atintono (2011), the maximum number of preverbal particles is five, while the maximum number of postverbal particles is even lower, namely two. The example in (15) illustrates a clause with the maximum number of preverbal and postverbal particles. Note that gaŋɛ is not a particle.

Preverbal Particles

Temporal particles

Tense particles

Preverbal tense particles mark either past or future tense. There is no preverbal particle expressing present tense. Within the VP, it is not possible to have a particle expressing time in a combination with a particle expressing tense, because particles refering to temporal adverbials measure definite time, while particles expressing tense measure time indefinitely.²

Dáá
Dáá is a past tense particle, that is used in order to express contexts that are at least a week ago. Therefore, temporal particles are used for events and actions that happened within two to four days ago, meaning in less than a week ago.

Yùùm
The tense partcile yùùm also marks tense, but it denotes time that is at least one year ago. This particle is used often to describe situations or conditions that no longer exist.

Ná (wán)
The future particle ná is mostly used in the Bongo dialect, while wán is used in Bolga and Nankani dialects. Note that the future particle ná is homophone with the aspectual particle ná. They are distinguished semantically by the form of the verb they precede. The future particle occurs before the perfective verb, while the aspectual particle occurs before habitual imperfective verbs.²

Wà
Following Atintono (2011), the future particle wà is the grammaticalized form of the verb wa'am ('come'). Some dialects as Bolga and Ninkani use wà and wán alternatively in order to mark the future. The particle wán also indicates focus in order to corroborate that the expression will definitely happen in the future.

Conditional particle

In Gurenɛ, the conditional particle sán is embedded immediately after the subject in a subordinated clause.

Aspectual particles

Kɔ'ɔm
This preverbal particle is used to emphasize that an event or action was performed with ease, thus there are no complications or difficulties concomitant with that event or action. Moreover, the particle can also be combined with the habitual form of a verb, which is formed by the addition of the suffix -a as in (23).

Púgúm
This particle indicates that an event or action is completely achieved and can be best translated by even.

Pílúm
This particle marks that an event or action was completed before the expected time and can be transalted with already.

Nán
The particle nán indicates that an action or event was just moments ago.

Yèèm (wèèm)
The particle yèèm is used in Bolga, while the particle wèèm is used in Bongo and Nankani dialects. Both particles emphasize that the speaker just makes an expression or performs an action without any intent or purpose.

Kèlùm
This particle indicates that an event or action is still continuing and thus can be best transalted with still.

Nàn
This particle is semantically similar to kèlùm in that both mark the continuation of an action or event, but nán is mostly used to mark the continuation of a certain condition rather than an activity.

Tábélɛ
The particle tábélɛ indicates that an event or action occured as a historical fact, meaning that the event is special in not occuring
frequently.

Wá
This particle emphasizes that an event or action happened a long time ago, at least a year ago or even after more time.

Lé
This particle is a grammaticalized form of the verb lebe ('return') and indicates the repetition of an action or event. Thus, it can be best translated with again.

Mààn
This particle also marks repetition of an action or event. In some dialects as Bongo, the form of the particle is malegum. In combination with the preverbal particle lé the particle mààn indicates that an event or action is performed repetitively, as in (33b).

Ná
This particle gives a habitual reading of an event or action expressed by the verb. Whereas the Bongo dialect uses ná frequently, Bolga and Nankani on the other hand use ní more frequently.

Ní
The particle ní is a habitual marker indicating that an action or event occurs regularly.

Yà'àm
This particle is also a habitual marker and refers to events that a certain person practicses regularly. Moreover, the particle is used frequently in order to denote negative habits of particular people.

Nyàà
The particle nyàà marks the sequence of events and can be translated to then.

Lèèm
This particle also indicates that an event occurs after another even had happened, but in contrast to the particle nyàà above, the particle lèèm does not indicate that an event is immediately following another event, but rather implies a particular amount of time between the events.

Túgúm
This aspectual particle expresses rather and indicates that something had happened against previous expectations.

Yɛrúm
This particle indicates that an action is necessarily performed due to the lack of alternatives.

Yí
This particle expresses that an action, which was expected not to happen, indeed or surprisingly happened.

Emphatic particle

The emphatic particle in Guren​ɛ​ is sìrùm and is used to emphasize that something actually had happened as in (42a) or will happen, if it is combined with the future tense particle wán as in (42b).

Epistemic particles

Epistemic particles in Guren​ɛ indicate whether a given expression is true or not, whether it is probably true or not and whether it is speculated or not.

Zí'ím
This particle is used in cases in which the occurence of an event is proposed, but not verified.

Nà'àm
This particle is similar to zí'ím and can be translated to may or might in English.

Bà'àsùm
This particle is used in order to express the certainty of an event or action.

Purpose particle

This particle indicates that an action or event is performed intentionally.

Main Verb

The verb in Gurenɛ expresses state, activity and process. It consists of an obligatory stem or root, which may take one or more suffixes. ²
Each verb has two forms, a perfective and an imperfective form. The perfective form has the suffix -ri and the imperfective form the suffix -ra. The imperfective form is used if something lasts or happened in the past, while the perfective form is used for expressions in the present. Both suffixes can vary in its consonant, but the vowel is specifically encoding aspect. The following table gives an overview of the most frequent verbs and its conjugation in Gurenɛ.³

Root/Stem/Infinitive		Perfective -ri		Imperfective -ra
		(single) closed event		open event
Gurenɛ	Gloss	follows Object/Adverb	follows Pronominal
nyu	drink	nyuuri	nyuura
da'	buy	da'ari	da'ara
lebe	return	leberi	lebera
dikɛ	take	dikɛri	dikɛra
pagesɛ	imitate	pagaesɛri	pagaesra
pa'alɛ	teach	pa'ali	pa'ala
di	eat	diti	dita
darɛ	disturb	dati	data
parɛ	be a lot	pati	pata
kiŋɛ	go	kini	kina
siŋɛ	walk	sini	sina
sigum	come down	sigeni	sigena

Postverbal Particles

In general, there are five particles that occur postverbally, one particle each for tense, focus, affirmative, completive and directional aspect. They are ordered relatively simple as compared to the bunch of preverbal particles, also shown in (14). The maximum number of postverbal particles is constrained to two, thus similarly to the preverbal particles it is not possible to have a combination of all postverbal particles within one clause.

Tense particle

Nì
This particle is also a tense particle, but the only one that occurs postverbally. It denotes events and actions that happened not that long ago prior to the speech time.

Focus particle

Lá
This particle is possibly one of the most interesting particles in Guren​ɛ, since it realizes a number of grammatical functions. Its main function is to mark focus on elements it immediately follows, i.e. the verb. Note that there are further focus markers such as ti as in (3a), n as in (3b) and m​ɛ as in the following subpart of this section. According to Atintono (2011), these other focus marker need further investigation, since their difference to lá is still an open issue.

Another function is to mark definiteness as a number of present examples illustrate, so this particle can either be a marker of definiteness or function as a demonstrative pronoun or determiner, respectively. Outside of the VP the particle can additionally function as a coordination between two NPs, as shown in the following example. Depending on its grammatical function the tone on the particle changes, such that as a definite marker it has a high tone, whereas it has a low tone if it is used as a focus marker.

Aspectual particles

M​ɛ
This particle marks affirmatives, but can also be used to mark focus, mainly contrastive focus.

Yá
The particle yá denotes completion and is the only postverbal particle that cannot cooccur with imperfective verbs.

Nà
This final particle is used as a directional marker and can be used in addition to local adverbials such as kalam in (52).

Negation

Negation is also expressed by preverbal particles, whose choice depends on tense and modality.

Nominal Negation

The particle dagi denotes the absence of a relation between two entities.

Negation of a declarative

In order to negate a declarative, the particle kà is placed between the subject and the predicate.

Negation involving future

The negative particle kà is in complementary distribution with kán, which is only used if negation involves future.

Negation of an imperative

If negation should be expressed in an impertive, the particle dá is used. This particle is in complementary distribution with the other negative particles, such that dá is only used in imperatives.

Question Formation

Questions can be formed by either an ex situ or an in situ strategy, they can be embedded or extracted and multiple questions are also possible depending on certain conditions.

Main Question words³

Gurenɛ	Gloss
-lɛ, se-, ŋwani, ŋwana	how much
ŋwani, ŋwana	how
yó	.. isn't it?
bíi, kóo	or
bem, bini, bɛ, bɛsa	where
bem, bem sɔi, bem basɛ	why
daandina, ŋwani, ŋwana	when
-na	which
se-	which one
bem, beni, bɛ, ŋwani, ŋwana	what is it that ..
-ni, -na	who
-ni, -na, beni, bem, bɛ	what

Ex situ

Ex situ questions are formed in cases in which the question word represents the subject or functions as the agent of the clause, respectively. Thereby the strict SVO order in Gurenɛ is obeyed.

In situ

Mostly, questions in Gurenɛ are formed by a raising intonation of the final tone, such that a high-low contour is generated as in (58a).

Embedded

In embedded contexts, the question is preceded by the complementizer tí and depending on whether a question word is present, the order is CQVO or CSVO, respectively.

Multiple Questions

It is possible to form a question with more than one question word, such that one question word occurs ex situ in subject position and the other one(s) in situ. (60b) is marked as ungrammatical, because the question word beni does not represent the subject of the clause, but occurs in subject position and because the second question word occurs preverbally, whereas it could only occur postverbally due to the strict SVO word order.

Long distance extraction

In Gurenɛ the question word can occur in several different positions within the clause, such that it can also cross clause boundaries. The following examples illustrate different positions, in which the question word can appear.