Gur

Abstract

<p>Within Niger-Congo, Gur is one of the families with the most highly developed agglutination systems in both the nominal and the verbal phrase. At the same time, the morphology of the Gur languages is characterized by a high rate of reduction and restructuring processes which can be best studied in the context of the nominal class systems, which reveal almost all evolutionary stages. Besides some lexical items, the reconstruction of a relatively high number of nominal class markers confirms the family’s strong relationship with Adamawa and Benue-Congo languages. The modern verbal systems are characterized by different aspect systems (marked by different verbal stems or suffixes) and by preverbal tense markers; post-verbal clitics denote assertion. Serial verb constructions are found in all languages, but more or less complementary to verbal derivations. Diathesis is expressed by moving patients to the subject position. Word order change is another prominent evolutionary phenomenon within the family.</p>

Noun class agreement in Kafire (Senufo): A Lexical-Functional Grammar account

“…Our arrangement differs from the one adopted in Miehe & Winkelmann, eds. (2007) for Gur and those in Traoré & Féry 2018 and Traoré 2020 for Tagbana in that it does not treat the singular and the plural markers as separate classes. Definite noun class markers are listed in Table 2.…”

“…Noun class systems of Gur languages have received considerable attention (Nicole 1999, Miehe & Winkelmann, eds. 2007, inter alia), but the extent to which they function in the same way as in Senufo languages remains unknown.…”

Tone and morphological level ordering in Dagaare

“…(2021). For general overviews of this language group, see Bendor-Samuel (1971), Manessy (1975), Naden (1989), Miehe (2012) and Eberhard et al . (2020).…”