Browsing by Author "Bobuafor, M."

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Cultural values and the pragmatic significance of proverbial sayings in Tafi and Ewe
(Journal of Pragmatics, 2021) Bobuafor, M.
Proverbs have cognitive and socio-cultural value. As tools for socialisation, proverbs are channels of shared moral and cultural values in communities of practice. The paper in vestigates the functions of, and the cultural values embodied in selected proverbial sayings in Tafi, a Ghana-Togo Mountain language, and their counterparts in Ewe, a Gbe language. The analysis is based on a small corpus of proverbs gathered during immersion fieldwork among the Tafi, and relies on ethnographic and linguistic methods. The Ewe versions are extracted from proverb collections and from the equivalents provided by Tafi bilinguals. From a semantic and a pragmatic perspective, proverbs have both textual and indexical, context-dependent, meanings. I explore the textual semantics of some of the Tafi and Ewe proverbial sayings drawing on the semantic template for proverbs used in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). It is suggested that the semantic structure of proverbs comprises framing components of traditionality and of their status as folk wisdom, as well as components describing the message, namely, the recurrent situation that calls forth the proverb, the advice and the analogy in the proverb. The paper reveals that patterns of proverb performance are similar across the languages suggesting shared practices due to language and cultural contact in proverbial language use
A Grammar of Tafi
(2013) Bobuafor, M.
Interrogatives in Dagara
(University of Ghana, 2015-07) Naapane, F. M.; Saah, K. K.; Bobuafor, M.; University Of Ghana, College Of Humanities, School Of Languages, Department Of Linguistics
Interrogative structures exist in all languages of the world and the use of interrogatives is a central activity in human communication. This dessertaiion seeks to explore the phenomenon of interrogatives as it obtains in Dagara, a dialect of Dagaare spoken in the Upper West Region of Ghana within the framework of the Basic Linguistic Theory as contained in Dixon (2012). The focus of this thesis is to identify and describe the typology of the interrogative clauses in Dagara and the strategies used in forming the various question types as well as the kinds of responses that are given as answers. It also discusses the interaction between focus and questions as well as the functions of polar interrogatives. I show from the data that three types of interrogatives exist in Dagara, namely: polar interrogative, alternative interrogative and content interrogative. Two main strategies are used in forming polar questions; the use of question particles and lengthening of final syllable vowel with a falling pitch. Alternative questions are formed by placing the coordinating conjunction bɪɪ „or‟ between two declarative structures. It is shown in the work that Dagara uses the ex situ strategy in forming content interrogatives thus Dagara prefers sentence initial position for its question words. Data for this research are sourced from both primary and secondary sources and my knowledge of the language as a native speaker.
Some Verbal Alternations in Ewe
(Afrika und Übersee (89): 109-126, 2007) Osam, E. K.; Bobuafor, M.; Agbedor, P.
Verbs which imply causative / inchoative alternation can occur as either one-place or two-place predicates. Such verbs are usually of change-of-state verbs. However, this paper identifies certain change-of-state verbs that do not take part in this alternation; importantly, it identifies alternations in which the object is not expressed. The unexpressed object alternations are of two types: the understood object and the unspecified object. Only a few verbs show the understood object alternation; they include mu „be drunk‟ and kpã „end, stop‟. Verbs that undergo the unspecified object alternation include verbs of “inherent directed motion”, verbs of “involuntary bodily processes” and verbs of “cries and movement”.