Department of Linguistics

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://197.255.125.131:4000/handle/123456789/23081

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    The Ethnography of Surrogate Speech in a Foreign Language: The Case of the Timpani Drum Language among the Dagomba of Ghana
    (Journal of African Cultural Studies, 2023) Hudu, F.A.
    This article presents a study of the timpani drum beats and the akarima drummer among the Dagomba of Ghana, using analysis of audio and video recordings of drumming sessions and interviews with the drummers. Borrowed from the Asantes in the eighteenth century, the timpani transmits limited, oft-repeated messages in Akan, a language that neither the drummer nor his Dagomba patrons understand. In spite of this, the timpani is an integral part of Dagomba culture and rituals. In addition to transmitting messages, with the drum, the akarima guards tradition and culture heritage, and reinforces Dagomba values and cultural ethos. As a guardian of tradition, the akarima resists innovation of the practices associated with the use of the drum. As a constructor of realities, he creates knowledge and values from the praises of chiefs and imparts them to his patrons and actively moulds their lives to conform to these values. The article argues that, far from being a deficiency, the use of the drum to transmit messages in a language not comprehensible to the people contributes significantly to the success of the akarima, who functions as imparter of values to his listeners
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    Language Contact in Santrokofi, a Ghana-Togo Mountain Language Community: Impact on Selee
    (Language Matters, 2024) Agbetsoamedo, Y.; Dankwa-Apawu, D.; Amuzu, E.
    The present study examines the language contact situation in Santrokofi, in Ghana, where Selee, a Ghana-Togo Mountain language, enjoys a good degree of maintenance although it is in triglossic contact with Ewe, Akan, and English. With insight from the triglossic structure model, we collected and analysed quantitative and qualitative data which revealed that Selee is the native’ ingroup language while Ewe (and to a limited extent, Akan) is their intergroup informal language with “others”; English is the dominant language of classroom interactions and other formal settings. There is evidence of lexical borrowing into Selee from the other languages, especially English and Ewe. The youth may be said to be holding on to Selee impressively, but this ongoing language maintenance may be put to the test by the looming encroachment of Santrokofi by Hohoe, the neighbouring major township where most public servants in Santrokofi currently reside.
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    Bloody widows? Discourses of tradition and gender in Ghanaian politics
    (Discourse & Society, 2022) Diabah, G.
    According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, although there have been steady increases in the number of women in politics, widespread gender inequalities persist. This is particularly pervasive in patriarchal societies where gender norms and practices are deeply entrenched, with socio-cultural barriers often cited as some of the key impediments to women’s search for political power. There have, therefore, been calls to remove such barriers for effective participation. Unfortunately, some events that occurred before Ghana’s 2020 election discouraged, rather than encourage women’s participation in governance. With data from articles, headlines and comments from various online media outlets, this paper examines three events that reinforce what may be called ‘a bloody widow discourse’ in Ghana’s politics. Using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, the paper shows how traditional norms and expectations associated with widowhood can be perceived as barriers to women’s (and not men’s) quest for political power, thereby sustaining the unequal gender and power relations in politics. The use of allusions and rhetorical questions and presuppositions further perpetuate a ‘blame-the-widow’ discourse which makes the women appear unworthy of the power they seek.
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    Metaphorical euphemisms in death-discourse among the Nzema
    (Studies in African Languages and Cultures, 2022) Yakub, M.; Agyekum, K.
    This article seeks to deepen our understanding of the cognitive processes involved in death euphemisms in Nzema, a Kwa language of Ghana. The article highlights the metaphorical “mappings” across conceptual domains, where the concept of death (target domain) is well understood in terms of more physical events such as journey, departure, return, invitation, continuous sleep, losing a fight, etc. (source domain). It is demonstrated that the Nzema conceptualise death also as retirement, subtraction, and bereavement, as living in darkness, being missing at the crossroads, burial as hiding/preserving, burying as sowing a seed, coffin as house for an individual, cemetery/grave as better place, place of rest, and corpse as a thing among others.
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    Defining the prosodic word with segmental processes in Dagbani
    (Acta Linguistica Academica, 2022) Hudu, F.
    Few studies have explored the relevance of metrical structures in segmental processes. This paper shows that Dagbani (Gur, Ghana) has a prosodic word dominating a trochaic foot, which licenses segmental processes and phonotactics. The foot is the domain for marked vowels and unmarked consonants. The prosodic word regulates the sequencing of syllables of different degrees of sonority and weight within a word. The Optimality Theoretic analyses make use of classical metrical theory and prosodic principles. in defining the prosodic word in stress languages to highlight the typological relevance of these principles and the prosodic universality of these metrical structures
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    ‘The Mother Of All Nations’,Gendered Discourses In Ghana’s 2020 Elections
    (Social Dynamics, 2022) Diabah, G.; Agyepong, D.P.
    Gendered discourses in Ghana’s politics are not new. Unlike previous years, however, the gendered discourse in the 2020 election was different because the leading opposition party (NDC) selected a female running mate. Considering that the seat has been rotating between the NDC and NPP since 1992, Ghanaians foresaw a “real” possibility of having a female vice president. With data from online news articles and social media, this paper examines the nature of the gendered discourse that characterised Ghana’s 2020 election. We focus on stylistic devices and other linguistic strategies used with a view to understanding how gender either took a centre stage or “seeped” through the political discourse. Underpinned by Ambivalent Sexism Theory and Post-structuralist Discourse Analysis and findings indicate that although the running mate was sometimes represented in ways that challenge traditional gender stereotypes, she was largely represented in stereotypical ways. thereby corroborating findings from other parts of the world. These were done through devices like allusion, sarcasm, simile, metaphor and rhetorical questions. Findings also show that although it was the NDC that actively played the “gender card” to galvanise support, the NPP also played it to dissuade voters from voting for the NDC.
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    The Syntax And Semantics Of Gã Future Markers
    (Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 2022) Campbell, A.
    This paper explores the syntax and semantics of two grammatical markers of future time in Gã (Niger-Congo, Kwa): bàá- and àá-. The coexistence of àá- and over a long period, coupled with their overlapping roles, has led to some inconsistency in their analysis. I show that in modern Gã, bàá- is the most prevalent future marker, with àá- existing much less prominently alongside it. Data from natural speech and elicitation reveal that both markers have modal functions in addition to the temporal function. Bàá can also be used specifically to mark habits. Due largely to the overwhelming frequency of the temporal function in the discourse data, I maintain that the primary function of bàá- is as a future tense marker. It is therefore not purely modal. àá- has all but fallen out of use and has a more modal than temporal function. This study uncovers previously unreported non-temporal uses of bàá- and underscores the crucial role played by frequency in the determination of category function.
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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
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    The Morphological And Syntactic Functions Of Dagbani Nominal Suffixes
    (Topics in Linguistics, 2023) Hudu, F.; Iddrisu, A.
    One of the defining morphological properties of nouns and adjectives of Dagbani (a Gur/Mabia language) of northern Ghana) and related languages is the presence of suffixes that mark number (singular or plural) as well as serve as the basis for noun classification. The typical regular noun or adjective (e.g. bi-a ‘a child’) consists of a bound root (bi-) providing the lexical meaning and a suffix (-a), which indicates the singular number of the noun. In plural form, the suffix is replaced by a different one. marks plurality (bi-hi). In this paper, we show that while this broad description is generally accepted, is much weaker than assumed in previous studies, with many inconsistencies. As our main goal, we offer a much broader analysis of the morphological and syntactic functions of the nominal suffixes. We show that these suffixes are primarily there to project lexical words as nouns and adjectives and should be referred to as nominal suffixes used to inflect inherent nouns and derive nouns and adjectives from verbs. The nominal suffixes are also crucial to distinguishing between different compound nouns and nouns. phrases. The paper is largely descriptive, with no specific theoretical approach assumed.