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A grammar of Moloko
Dianne Friesen, with Mana Djeme Isaac, Ali Gaston, and Mana Samuel
Politics & Social Sciences
A grammar of Moloko
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Description
Contents
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This grammar provides the first comprehensive grammatical description of Moloko, a Chadic language spoken by about 10,000 speakers in northern Cameroon. The grammar was developed from hours and years that the authors spent at friends’ houses hearing and recording stories, hours spent listening to the tapes and transcribing the stories, then translating them and studying the language through them. Time was spent together and with others speaking the language and talking about it, translating resources and talking to Moloko people about them. Grammar and phonology discoveries were made in the office, in the fields while working, and at gatherings. In the process, the four authors have become more and more passionate about the Moloko language and are eager to share their knowledge about it with others. Intriguing phonological aspects of Moloko include the fact that words have a consonantal skeleton and only one underlying vowel (but with ten phonetic variants). The simplicity of the vowel system contrasts with the complexity of the verb word, which can include information (in addition to the verbal idea) about subject, direct object (semantic Theme), indirect object (recipient or beneficiary), direction, location, aspect (Imperfective and Perfective), mood (indicative, irrealis, iterative), and Perfect aspect. Some of the fascinating aspects about the grammar of Moloko include transitivity issues, question formation, presupposition, and the absence of simple adjectives as a grammatical class. Most verbs are not inherently transitive or intransitive, but rather the semantics is tied to the number and type of core grammatical relations in a clause. Morphologically, two types of verb pronominals indicate two kinds of direct object; both are found in ditransitive clauses. Noun incorporation of special ‘body-part’ nouns in some verbs adds another grammatical argument and changes the lexical characteristics of the verb. Clauses of zero transitivity can occur in main clauses due to the use of dependent verb forms and ideophones. Question formation is interesting in that the interrogative pronoun is clause-final for most constructions. The clause will sometimes be reconfigured so that the interrogative pronoun can be clause-final. Expectation is a foundational pillar for Moloko grammar. Three types of irrealis mood relate to speaker’s expectation concerning the accomplishment of an event. Clauses are organised around the concept of presupposition, through the use of the na-construction. Known or expected elements are marked with the na particle. There are no simple adjectives in Moloko; all adjectives are derived from nouns. The authors invite others to further explore the intricacies of the phonology and grammar of this intriguing language.

Language
English
ISBN
978-3-946234-63-0
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
1 Introduction
1.1 Linguistic classification
1.2 Language use, language contact, and multilingualism
1.3 Previous research
1.4 Snake story
1.5 Disobedient Girl story
1.6 Cicada story
1.7 Values exhortation
2 Phonology
2.1 Labialisation and palatalisation prosodies
2.2 Consonants
2.2.1 Phonetic description
2.2.2 Underlyingly labialised consonants
2.2.3 Prosodic conditioning of consonant allophones
2.2.4 Non-prosodic conditioning of consonants
2.2.4.1 Word-final allophones of /n/ and /h/
2.2.4.2 Word-final allophones of /r/
2.3 Vowels
2.3.1 Vowel phonemes and allophones
2.3.2 Prosodic conditioning of vowel allophones
2.3.3 Non-prosodic conditioning of vowel allophones
2.4 Tone
2.4.1 Depressor consonants
2.4.2 Tone spreading rules
2.5 Notes on the syllable
2.5.1 Syllable structure
2.5.2 Syllable restructuring
2.6 Word boundaries
2.6.1 Phonological criteria for word breaks
2.6.1.1 Word-final /h/ realized as [x]
2.6.1.2 Word-final /n/ realised as [ŋ]
2.6.1.3 Prosodies do not cross word boundaries
2.6.1.4 Deletion of the -aj suffix in verbs
2.6.1.5 Deletion of word-final /n/
2.6.2 Affix, clitic, and extension
3 Grammatical classes
3.1 Pronouns
3.1.1 Free personal pronouns
3.1.1.1 Regular pronouns
3.1.1.2 Emphatic pronouns
3.1.2 Possessive pronouns
3.1.2.1 Semantic range of possessive constructions
3.1.2.2 Tone of possessive pronouns
3.1.3 Honorific possessive pronouns
3.1.4 Interrogative pronouns
3.1.5 Unspecified pronouns
3.2 Demonstratives and demonstrationals
3.2.1 Nominal demonstratives
3.2.2 Local adverbial demonstratives
3.2.2.1 Proximal and distal local adverbial demonstratives
3.2.2.2 Anaphoric demonstrative
3.2.3 Manner adverbial demonstratives
3.3 Numerals and quantifiers
3.3.1 Cardinal numbers for items
3.3.2 Numbers for counting money
3.3.3 Ordinal numbers
3.3.4 Non-numeral quantifiers
3.4 Existentials
3.5 Adverbs
3.5.1 Simple verb phrase-level adverbs
3.5.2 Derived verb phrase-level adverbs
3.5.3 Clause-level adverbs
3.5.4 Discourse-level adverbs
3.6 Ideophones
3.6.1 Semantic and phonological features of ideophones
3.6.2 Syntax of ideophones
3.6.3 Clauses with zero transitivity
3.7 Interjections
4 Noun morphology
4.1 Phonological structure of the noun stem
4.2 Morphological structure of the noun word
4.2.1 Subclasses of nouns
4.2.2 Plural construction
4.2.3 Concrete nouns
4.2.4 Mass nouns
4.2.5 Abstract nouns
4.2.6 Irregular nouns
4.3 Compounding
4.4 Proper Names
5 Noun phrase
5.1 Noun phrase constituents
5.2 Noun phrase heads
5.2.1 Noun phrases with nominalised verb heads
5.2.2 Noun phrases with pronoun heads
5.3 Derived adjectives
5.3.1 Structure of noun phrase containing ga
5.3.2 Functions of noun phrases containing ga
5.4 Nouns as modifiers
5.4.1 Genitive construction
5.4.2 Permanent attribution construction
5.4.3 Relative clauses
5.5 Coordinated noun phrases
5.6 Adpositional phrase
5.6.1 Simple adpositional phrase
5.6.2 Complex adpositional phrase
6 Verb root and stem
6.1 The basic verb root and stem
6.2 The consonantal skeleton of the root
6.3 Underlying suffix
6.4 Underlying vowel in the root
6.5 Underlying prefix
6.6 Prosody of verb stem
6.7 Tone classes
6.7.1 Effect of depressor consonants
6.7.2 Effect of underlying form on tone of stem
6.7.2.1 Verb stems with one root consonant
6.7.2.2 Verb Stems with two root consonants
6.7.2.3 Verb stems with three or more root consonants
7 The verb complex
7.1 The phonological structure of the verb word
7.2 Imperative
7.3 Verb complex pronominals
7.3.1 Subject pronominal affixes
7.3.2 Indirect object pronominal enclitic
7.3.3 Third person direct object pronominal
7.4 Aspect and mood
7.4.1 Perfective
7.4.2 Imperfective
7.4.3 Irrealis mood
7.4.4 Habitual iterative
7.4.5 Intermittent iterative
7.5 Verbal extensions
7.5.1 Adpositionals
7.5.2 Directionals
7.5.3 Perfect
7.6 Nominalised verb form
7.6.1 Nominalised form as noun
7.6.2 Nominalised form as verb
7.6.3 Verb focus construction
7.7 Dependent verb forms
8 Verb phrase
8.1 Verb phrase constituents
8.2 Auxiliary verb constructions
8.2.1 Progressive auxiliary
8.2.2 Movement auxiliary
8.2.3 Stem plus ideophone auxiliary
9 Verb types and transitivity
9.1 Two kinds of transitive clauses
9.2 Verb types
9.2.1 Group 1: Verbs that can only be intransitive
9.2.2 Group 2: Verbs that can be transitive with direct object
9.2.3 Group 3: Verbs that can be transitive with indirect object
9.2.4 Group 4: Verbs that can be bitransitive
9.2.4.1 in transitive and bitransitive clauses
9.2.4.2 in intransitive clauses
9.2.5 Group 5: Transfer verbs
9.3 “Body-part” verbs (noun incorporation)
9.3.1 elé ‘eye’
9.3.2 sləmay ‘ear’
9.3.3 ma ‘mouth’
9.3.4 va ‘body’
9.3.5 har ‘body’
9.4 Clauses with zero grammatical arguments
10 Clause
10.1 Declarative clauses
10.1.1 Verbal clause
10.1.2 Predicate nominal, adjective, and possessive clauses
10.2 Negation constructions
10.2.1 Negative particles
10.2.2 Clausal negation construction
10.2.3 Constituent negation
10.3 Interrogative constructions
10.3.1 Content question construction
10.3.2 Yes-No question construction
10.3.3 Tag question construction
10.3.4 Rhetorical question construction
10.3.5 Emphatic question construction
10.4 Imperative constructions
10.5 Exclamatory constructions
11 The na marker and na constructions
11.1 Presupposition-assertion construction: na-marked clause
11.1.1 Temporal or logical sequence
11.1.2 Simultaneous events
11.1.3 Tail-head linking for cohesion
11.2 Presupposition-assertion construction: na-marked clausal element
11.3 Assertion-presupposition construction: right-shifted na-marked element
11.4 Definite construction: na-marked clausal element
11.5 Presupposition-focus construction: na precedes the final element of the verb phrase
12 Clause combining
12.1 Complement clauses
12.1.1 Dependent and nominalised verb complement clauses
12.1.2 Finite complement clauses
12.2 Dependent adverbial clauses
12.3 Clauses linked by conjunctions and conjunctive adverbs
12.3.1 Adverbial clauses introduced by a subordinating conjunction
12.3.2 Conditional construction
12.3.3 Coordinate constructions
12.3.4 Adverbial clauses with conjunctive adverbs
12.4 Juxtaposed clauses
Appendix A: List of verbs
Appendix B: Verb paradigms
Appendix C: Moloko-English Lexicon
Appendix D: English-Moloko Lexicon
References
Index
Name index
Language index
Subject index
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