i A STUDY OF THE VERBAL GROUP IN THE STUDENT PIDGIN (SP) OF THE EVANGELICAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH MAWUKO GIRLS‟ SHS, HO BY WILLIAM ADJEI-TUADZRA (10008986) A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF GHANA, LEGON IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF A MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY (MPHIL) ENGLISH DEGREE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF GHANA, LEGON JULY, 2015 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh ii DECLARATION I, William Adjei-Tuadzra, hereby declare that this thesis is the result of an original research conducted by me under the supervision of Prof Kari Dako and Prof ABK Dadzie, and that no part of it has been submitted anywhere else for any other purpose. Also, all works and sources consulted for the purpose have been duly acknowledged. ……………………………………… DATE:…………………………… WILLIAM ADJEI-TUADZRA (STUDENT) ………………………………………… DATE:……..………………….. PROF. KARI DAKO (CHIEF SUPERVISOR) ………………………………………… DATE:…………………… PROF. ABK DADZIE (ASSISTANT SUPERVISOR) University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh iii DEDICATION I dedicate this work to the following: i. Evangelist Harry Kwame Foli, the man who taught me the difference between knowledge and wisdom; ii. Chief Bilson Adjei-Tuadzra, the little boy who questioned everything; iii. Prof. Kari Dako, the giant who offered her shoulders for my sake. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To my supervisors: Professor Kari Dako and Professor ABK Dadzie, Thank you for bringing this out of me. Prof Dako, for one, has been my teacher since my undergraduate student days in 1998. I acknowledge Professor JF Wiredu and Dr Jemima A. Anderson (Department of English, University of Ghana) who were very helpful in this research. I wish to thank sincerely Eric Kwabena Asumadu (of blessed memory), that course mate of mine who took me as his burden when I was attending lectures whilst in crutches. How could I have passed my first semester courses in the first year without his input? And to Hon. Joshua Makubu, thanks for everything. I cannot thank enough those SP girls of EPC Mawuko Girls‟ Senior High School, Ho who led me into their little secrets. I shall forever remain grateful. Yet let me thank the Headmistress at the time, Miss Janet Akosua Kwasi (Mrs Attey) who allowed me access to her “dear children”. Her able assistant, Mad Ernestina Peniana (Assistant Headmistress –Administration), whose office and home became my coffee haven, deserves my appreciation, I say “Thank you”. I am also grateful to Mr Delight Dodzi Nyamaume (Assistant Headmaster, Academic Affairs) for perusing my methodology and finding out how it could fit into the academic calendar of my study population. Still at Mawuko Girls SHS, I am indebted to the following: Mr David Yao Agbove (Head of Mathematics Department), Mr Eusebyus Ekeha (Head of Languages Department), Mr Theodore Fearnot Atsu, and Mr Samuel Bimpeh. You are good men in Africa. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh v Let me thank Madam Elizabeth Shine Edjakey for taking care of my two adventurous children (Chief and Kari) whilst I studied. May God bless you. Mr Emmanuel Mawufemor Buadu, Evangelist and Mrs Foli, Emmanuel Patu & family, Wallahs of Wallahs Academy (Ho), Edem Soglo, Francis Koku Brany, Suzy Adjei-Tuadzra, SP Kofi Adzei-Tuadzra, Bertha Akubia … and Solace Akutse (my teenage proofreader) Edith Worgbeyi, the captain… Mr and Mrs Sekley, my health advisors … Gifty Ahadzi of Volta Hall Catering Services in Legon…the list is endless, the statement is endless. Above all, I want to thank Jehovah for placing all the above people around me when I needed them the most. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ABL………………………………………………Ability ANT………………………………………………Anterior AUX………………………………………………Auxiliary CAU………………………………………………Causative CAUS……………………………………………Causative CLP………………………………………………Complementizer COM…………………………………………….Completive COP………………………………………………Copula COMP……………………………………………Comparative CONJ…………………………………………… Conjunction DEO………………………………………………Deontic DET……………………………………………….Determiner EMP………………………………………………Emphatic EQ…………………………………………………Equalizer FOC………………………………………………Focuser INT………………………………………………Intetionalis INTE……………………………………………..Intensifier IRR………………………………………………Irrealis LOC………………………………………………Locative NEG………………………………………………Negator NPU………………………………………………Non-Punctual OBJ………………………………………………Object/Objective Case PD………………………………………………..Possessive Determiner PLU……………………………………………...Plural University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh vii PL……………………………………………….Plural SE……………………………………………….British Standard English SG………………………………………………Singular SP……………………………………………….Student Pidgin SUB……………………………………………..Subject/Subjective Case SVC……………………………………………..Serial Verb Construction L1…………………………………………………First Language/Mother Tongue 1…………………………………………………First Person 2…………………………………………………Second Person 3…………………………………………………Third Person University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh viii Table of Contents DECLARATION ............................................................................................................................ ii DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................ vi TABLE OF CONTENTS… .............................................................................................................................. VIII ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE ............................................................................................................................. 2 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Background to the Study .................................................................................................. 2 1.3 The Linguistic Landscape of Ghana ................................................................................. 8 1.4 Pidgin in Ghana .............................................................................................................. 13 1.5 Student Pidgin (SP) in its Ghanaian Sociolinguistic Context ........................................ 16 1.6 The Study Area ............................................................................................................... 19 1.7 Statement of the Problem .............................................................................................. 20 1.8 Research Questions ........................................................................................................ 20 1.9 Aims and Objectives of the Study .................................................................................. 22 1.11 Theoretical Framework .................................................................................................. 23 1.12 Relevance/Justification of the Study .............................................................................. 23 1.13 Delimitation of the Study ............................................................................................... 24 1.14 Organization of the Study ............................................................................................... 25 CHAPTER TWO .......................................................................................................................... 27 2.1 LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................... 27 2.2.0 METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................... 42 2.2.1 The Research Area .................................................................................................. 42 2.2.3 The Data: Sampling, Data Collection and Transcription ........................................ 43 2.2.4 Theoretical Framework/Analysis ............................................................................ 45 2.2.5 Presentation of Data ................................................................................................ 46 CHAPTER THREE: SYNTACTIC BEHAVIOUR OF VERBS IN ENGLISH .......................... 47 3.0 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 47 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh ix 3.1 Verb Forms ..................................................................................................................... 47 3.2.0 Verb Complementation .................................................................................................... 50 3.2.1 Copula Verbs ........................................................................................................... 50 3.3.0 Transitive Verbs ..................................................................................................... 53 3.3.5 Intransitive Verbs .................................................................................................... 53 3.4.0 Tense, Aspect, Mood and Modality ............................................................................ 58 3.4.1 Tense and Aspect ........................................................................................................ 59 3.4.2 Tense ........................................................................................................................... 59 Mood ..................................................................................................................................... 69 3.6.0 Modality...................................................................................................................... 84 3.6.1 Epistemic Modality ................................................................................................ 85 3.6.2 Deontic Modality ........................................................................................................ 86 CHAPTER FOUR: ANALYSIS OF DATA ................................................................................. 89 4.1.0 The Verbal Group in SP ............................................................................................. 89 4.2.0 Order in the Verbal Group ......................................................................................... 90 4.2.1 Order of Verbs in Declaratives ................................................................................... 90 4.2.3 Negation...................................................................................................................... 93 4.3.0 Lexical Verbal Elements ........................................................................................... 94 4.3.1 Single Orthographic Word Verb Elements ............................................................. 94 4.3.2 The Multi-Word Verbs ........................................................................................... 95 4.4.0 Serial Verb Construction ............................................................................................ 99 4.5.0 The Auxiliary Verbs: Primary and Modal .................................................................. 99 4.5.1 Primary Auxiliary Verbs ....................................................................................... 100 4.5.2 Modal Auxiliary Verbs ......................................................................................... 103 4.6.0 Lexical Verbs ............................................................................................................ 104 4.7.0 Complementation of the Verb Group in SP .............................................................. 104 4.7.1 Transitive Verbs .................................................................................................... 104 4.7.5.0 Intransitive Verbs .............................................................................................. 109 Copulas in SP .......................................................................................................................... 111 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh x 4.9.0 Unusual Verbs in SP ................................................................................................. 118 4.9.1 Verbs of Kwa Origin .............................................................................................. 119 Grammaticalization/Semantic Shift ....................................................................................... 119 4.10.0 Tense, Mood and Aspect in SP ................................................................................. 121 4.10.1.0 Tense ................................................................................................................ 121 4.10.1.3 The Imperfective (Nonpunctual) Aspect ........................................................... 124 4.10.1.4 The Past before Past (Anterior)/Perfective ............................................................ 125 4.10.1.4 The Completive Aspect ......................................................................................... 126 4.11.0 Mood/Modality ........................................................................................................ 130 4.11.1 Irrealis Mood ......................................................................................................... 131 4.11.2 Ability ...................................................................................................................... 135 4.11.3 Intentionalis ......................................................................................................... 127 4.11.4.0 Imperatives ........................................................................................................... 137 4.11.5 Deontic Modality .................................................................................................. 141 4.12.0 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 142 CHAPTER FIVE SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION ............................................................. 143 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 143 5.1 Findings........................................................................................................................….144 5.2 Recommendations ........................................................................................................ 147 5.3 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 147 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 148 Appendix A: Transcript of Recordings ....................................................................................... 158 APPENDIX B (PROFILE SP GIRLS) ...................................................................................... 188 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 1 ABSTRACT This research set out to study the Verbal Group in the Student Pidgin (SP) of a female Senior High School in Ho. SP is the type of Pidgin English, variously described as “educated,” “institutionalised” or “student” pidgin, and is believed to have started in a few prestigious boys‟ secondary schools in the late 1950s and 60s in the southern part of Ghana. It [SP] has since spread fast among secondary school students and graduates in the country, and has taken a firm foothold. Recent findings have found that women and girls are suddenly using the code that was initially the preserve of the young male elite. This thesis tests the use of SP among female Senior High School (SHS) students in EPC Mawuko Girls‟ Senior High School, Ho in the Volta Region by carrying out a syntactic study of the verbal group of the pidgin spoken by the female SHS students. Data for the research came from taped conversations on a variety of topics of interest to teenage female students. Nine (9) student girls aged between 15 and 25 in SHS 2 & 3 were taped for the purpose. In all, the study has proved that contrary to earlier positions that female SP speakers used the code only to be accepted in male company, female students have developed their own mechanisms and intricacies of the code. In this way, such syntactic structures as Tense, Mood & Aspect (TMA), Complementation of Verbs and Modality found in pidgins and creoles are present in the female SP. Though the literature available shows that the code began with male secondary school students only, it has now become a code for both genders. This research argues, therefore, that the SP of female speakers shares whatever meaning mechanisms and syntactic intricacies found in the adult male code. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 2 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Introduction Though linguists cannot account for how exactly languages originated, they [linguists] delight themselves in studying the properties and aspects of language in relation to society (Yule 1996). Linguists are therefore able to differentiate between natural languages and auxiliary languages based on a set of criteria. Whatever it is, natural or artificial, a language has the property of signaling meaning to those who use it. It therefore does not matter, in some contexts, to the users of a language, what attitude is held about what they speak and enjoy. Student Pidgin, a Ghanaian variety of an African Youth Language has been gaining popularity among young Ghanaian male speakers for over fifty years. Following Dako and Bonnie (2013), one can argue that SP is structurally a pidgin but sociolinguistically not, based on its function in the Ghanaian sociolinguistic context. Recent findings have shown that female speakers are beginning to use and even mold this code in their own way. The linguistic landscape of Ghana has seen a new wave of change: a documented open use and well developed SP among female senior high school girls. Perhaps, this is the beginning of an end to SP‟s status as a male-dominated language. 1.2 Background to the Study Pidgins and creoles serve a lot of human communication needs wherever they are used, yet linguists are not able to define them accurately. There are, therefore, as many definitions of what pidgins and creoles are as the pidgins and creoles themselves, yet because of their [pidgins and University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 3 creoles] nature, none of such definitions can fully account for the phenomenon (Romaine, 1988; Decamp, 1977; Todd, 1990). For instance both DeCamp (1977) and Romaine (1998), agree that the biggest problem with pidgin and creole studies is how the languages can be defined. DeCamp (1977) as quoted in Romaine (1988) says: There is…no agreement on the definition of the group of languages called pidgins and creoles. Linguists all agree that there is such a group, and that pidgin-creole studies have now become an important field within linguistics…Some definitions are based on functions, the role these languages (pidgins and creoles) play in the community: eg. A pidgin is an auxiliary trade language. Some are based on historical origins and development: eg., a pidgin may be spontaneously generated: A creole is a language that has evolved from a pidgin. Some definitions include formal characteristics: absence of gender, two tenses, inflectional morphology, or relative c l a u s e s , etc. Some linguists combine these different kinds of criteria and i n c l u d e a d d i t i o n a l r e s t r i c t i o n s i n their definitions (p.24) The import of this position is, therefore, that since not all pidgins and creoles have evolved in the same social milieu or through the same medium, or for the same purpose of communication, composing a watertight frame of definition into which all pidgins and creoles can fit will be extremely difficult. Corroborating this position, Todd (1990) says: …while scholars have increasingly come to recognize the importance of pidgin and creole languages, there has been considerable debate, and disagreement, among them as to the precise meaning to be attached to the terms [that is, pidgin and creole languages] (p.1) All the same, some linguists attempt defining pidgins and creoles, based upon what they know University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 4 about them. While some definitions are based on the functions of the codes, others define them from a structural viewpoint, and some combine both attributes and even go further. DeCamp (1971) as quoted in Romaine (1988), for instance, defines pidgin based on its sociolinguistic use and structure. Decamp says pidgin is a Contact v e r n a c u l a r , n o r m a l l y not the n a t i v e l a n g u a g e of any of its speakers… it is characterized by a limited vocabulary, an elimination of many grammatical devices such as number and gender, and a drastic reduction of redundant features (p.23.) Both Hudson (2003) and Naro (1978) recognize a pidgin as a fusion of two or more languages. Hudson (2003) argues that pidgin is one of the products of language mix, a process that ends up synthesizing more than one language into one. He compares a pidgin language with codeswitching and borrowing in this process. Hudson posits that a language synthesis may take different forms, citing Artificial Auxiliary Languages like Zamenhoff‟s Esperanto and Ogden‟s Basic English as examples. However, one important feature of the pidgin, Hudson notes, is that it is a variety created for “very practical and immediate purposes of communication,” when people have no mutual language to communicate in. This definition may not fit all languages and codes called pidgin since some of them are evolved, not because of the want of a common language (p.59). In Naro‟s (1978) view, when languages mix to form a pidgin, one of the constituent languages is recognised as the lexifier. He writes: The term pidgin may be defined as referring to a rule-governed system of verbal communication, used by two or more groups, which neither is nor portends to be the native University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 5 linguistic competence of any speaker or group. In most systems of this type, it is possible to identify one natural language as the source of the great majority of lexical items used; this is the base language (p.314). Holm (2010) also sees a pidgin language, among other things, as a contact or trade language. He states: A pidgin is a reduced language that results from extended contact between groups of people with no language in common; it evolves when they need some means of verbal communication, perhaps for trade, but no group learns the native language of any other group for social reasons that may include lack of trust or close contact. (p.5) A pidgin, therefore, in the opinion of Naro (1978), DeCamp (1971), Holm (2010) and Hudson (2003) develops when its speakers have no common language to fall back on and are thus forced to evolve a language for a practical and immediate use. Again, we can argue that a pidgin develops in a multilingual environment where the languages already available cannot help interlocutors to communicate. The community, in this case, therefore, must evolve and perhaps improvise a language to serve their immediate communication needs (Wardhaugh, 2010). Pidgin, thus far, is a language developed to fill a void among people who have no common language (DeCamp, 1971). In this situation, a pidgin can be described as a lingua franca in a given situation. By lingua franca, reference here is made to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO)‟s definition adopted in France in 1955: “a language which is used habitually by people whose mother tongues are different, in order to facilitate communication between them” (cited in Wardhaugh, 2010, p.55 ). A lingua franca of this nature can serve the purpose of a contact language, trade language or auxiliary language (Samarin,1968; Firth, 1996, cited in Wardhaugh, 2010). University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 6 A pidgin, therefore, in its strict sense is limited to very restricted domains such as “trade and it is no one‟s native language” (Hymes, 1971 p.15.). However when a pidgin grows to acquire native speakers, we sometimes call it a creole (Hudson 2003). On the genesis of pidgin languages, Whinnon (1971) argues that pidgins must have developed out of colonization and colonial administration. However, this might not be the case in Ghana and several other places where there used to be some extensive contact between Europeans and Africans, long before colonization began. It is common knowledge in Ghana that the first contacts between the Gold Coasters and Europeans were for the purposes of trade or evangelism, or both (Owu-Ewie, 2006). It can be observed, that pidgin languages in use today are based on what Singler (1988) calls the “linguistic universal” of the European traders, evangelists and administrators. More evidently, many pidgins today are based on and named after English, French, Portuguese and Dutch. The process of pidginization, Whinnon argues, requires at least three languages out of which two minor languages revolt against the third dominant one. On the composition of pidgins, Bickerton (1976) observes they [pidgins] draw much of their lexicon from an Indo-European parent language, while the syntax is based on a non-Indo- European language. Corroborating this position, Singler (1988) says a pidgin must have two major components: a superstrate and a substrate. The superstrate is the dominant language, mostly the newly arrived language that tries to supplant an existing one. In our local pidgins, we shall refer to the European language [British English in this case] as the superstrate and our local languages as the substrates. According to Singler, the lexifier is responsible for the “linguistic University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 7 universal” elements like “semantic and pragmatic elements that shape a creole” (p. 29). Following Singler, therefore, we reason that British English in SP is the superstrate while the substrate elements are mainly from Akan, Ga, Ewe, and sometimes Hausa. Indeed, Holm (2010) and Hall (1968) believe that African substrates have a considerable effect on Atlantic pidgins and creoles. Holm, for instance, states that Yoruba has a considerable effect on Nigerian Pidgin [hereafter NP]. In a related development, Akan, Ga and Ewe [Kwa languages] have considerable influence on SP (see Chapter Four). Forson (2006), and findings in this study as well, prove that passive sentence types, for example, are not found in SP. This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that the grammar of SP is based on the structure of Kwa languages, which Westermann and Bryan (1952), cited in Hyman (2004) observe, does not make room for a passive voice. Forson (2006) explains that SP does not allow room for overt transposition of agentive-affective roles as exists in a passive voice. Another influence of the West African substrate elements on Atlantic Pidgins is a trend variously named “serial verb construction”, “parallel serial verb construction” and “multi-verb construction,” much associated with many West African languages like Yoruba, Twi and Ewe (Holm, 2010, Holm 2004; Faraclas 1996; Ameka, 2005; Patrick, 2004). This trend is recorded in the SP of my study population (see Section 4.3.2). As explained in Chapter Two, not much work has been done on the semantics, syntax and pragmatics of pidgin in Ghana. This lack of interest as far as research into the linguistic characteristics of pidgins, and SP in this case, is not hard to explain. Attitudes towards pidgins University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 11 and creoles worldwide are uniform. Wardhaugh (2010, p.53) explains that before the 1930s, pidgins and creoles were noticeably ignored by linguists and researchers who considered these languages as „marginal‟, „haphazard‟, and so on (Todd, 1990 p.1; Holm, 2010 p.1). It is, however, expected that this analysis which provides an insight into the TMA system of the verbal group in SP will draw the attention of more linguists and sociolinguists to research further the linguistic characteristics of the code under discussion here. 1.3 The Linguistic Landscape of Ghana Ghana, from a linguist‟s point of view, can be described as “a highly multilingual developing nation” (Adams, Anderson & Dzahene-Quarshie, 2009, p. 357). Ghana Statistical Service, the statutory authority mandated for national censuses, is unable to account for the number of languages spoken in Ghana. Their census figures on languages and language use should have helped put this description in perspective. Some linguists have, however, documented the number of languages and dialects spoken in Ghana by recording varying figures. Following Dakubu (1996), Adika (2012) puts the number of languages spoken in Ghana at 50. Both Ofulue (2012) and Adams et al. (2009) believe the languages and dialects spoken in Ghana amount to 80. In all these back and forth arguments about the number of languages and dialects spoken in Ghana, one must be quick to point out that who is actually counting, and for what purpose, will determine the number of languages and dialects to be recognized and counted (Adams et al., 2009, p. 373). Assessing the linguistic landscape in Ghana, Agyekum (2009) observes that the high level of University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 12 language maintenance by the use of the local languages to perform the various “socio-cultural and socioeconomic” functions ensures that language death is not prevalent in Ghana (p. 400). Both Agyekum (2009) and Adams et al (2009) recognize religion, marriage, education and the media as some of the sociocultural and socioeconomic mediums through which languages are maintained in Ghana. The two works, however, acknowledge a major trend of language shift in Ghana. The shift mainly occurs towards the English language and can be accounted for by the role English plays in our national and international engagements. It is common knowledge that English is the official language of government, commerce and education, and is therefore the most prestigious code in use. English is available everywhere as the official language of the media, official public announcements and road signs among many others. Meanwhile, since the English language was brought to the Gold Coast in the 16th century, policies regarding its use in the educational system have been inexact (Owu-Ewie 2006; Adika 2012). From 1529 to 2002, the country witnessed not less than five changes in language policy regarding when a child going to school in Ghana should be introduced to the English language (ibid). As it stands now, schoolchildren in Ghana are expected to be instructed in English from primary one through to university. Out of the local languages spoken in Ghana, there are government-sponsored languages that enjoy airtime, namely: Akan, Dagbani, Ewe, Ga, Nzema and Hausa (Adika, 2012). Among the six languages, Akan is the most widely used on radio [private and state-managed] (Adams et al 2009) Apart from these, the rest can be counted as minority languages. Minority languages include the languages of migrant workers and foreign mission households, which may never have been accounted for. This is an indication of inter-ethnic interactions among the Ghanaian University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 13 people and their languages. 1.4 Pidgin in Ghana Ghanaian Pidgin English is a sprout of the West African Pidgin English (WAPE), and WAPE is considered in the literature as a variety of related pidgins “that range from rudimentary to highly expanded creole like varieties spoken in the coastal communities where English is an official language” (Ofulue, 2012, p.2; Holm, 1988, p 426; Sebba 1997, p.126). The literature recognises the WAPE as an English based family of pidgins that developed on the West African coast during the Afro-European trades in the 15 th and 16th centuries. WAPE is spoken in Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon. (Peter & Wolf, 2007; Ofulue, 2012). Following Huber (1999), Dako (2002), Osei-Tutu (2008), Ofulue (2012), Baiden (2013), and Wiredu (2013), among others, recognize two distinct varieties of pidgin in Ghana, on a cline. Huber asserts: Just as there are different types of Ghanaian English that may be arranged on a cline from highly educated to completely uneducated…there are also two distinct varieties of GhaPE that could be described as forming a continuum, with basilectal varieties that are associated with the less educated sections of society, to more acrolectal forms that are usually spoken by speakers who have at least progressed to the upper forms of secondary school. (p. 139- 140) The literature differentiates between the two varieties based upon their social functions. Huber (p. 141), for instance, calls them “institutionalised” and “non-institutionalised”, based upon who University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 14 use them and where. The former is used by students and alumni of higher educational institutions in Ghana and is mainly used as an in-group langue of solidarity. Forson 1996, for instance, calls it an “argot” while Dako (2000) refers to this variety as student pidgin or simply SP. Again, Forson (1996, 2006) calls it “School Pidgin”. The rest of the literature refers to it as SP. The other variety is labelled either as “non-institutionalised” or as “GhaPE” (Huber, 1999). This variety, the literature says is spoken in the densely populated multi-ethnic cities that team with illiterates and is thus used as a lingua franca. What this means is that GhaPE fills a linguistic void by coming in as a language to bridge the communication gap among the different ethnic groups within its domain. In this sense, GhaPE can be counted as a pidgin in the true sense of the word “pidgin”, whilst SP cannot. There are two theories on how a pidgin came to be spoken in Ghana: one school of thought believes that pidgins did develop in Ghana, while another school posits that foreign workers and other migrants brought a pidgin language to Ghana. In this argument, SP must be excluded because the literature is clear on its origin. Following Dadzie (1985), Huber (1999) and Dako (2002) believe SP was evolved in some southern prestigious secondary schools in the 60s and 70s in Ghana. Dadzie (cited in Huber) writes: In the 1950s and 1960s, the influence of the „sea men‟, as they were called, was considerable around the p o r t cities, e s p e c i a l l y T a ko r ad i a n d later T e m a . Because these seamen came back with the latest in fashion and swaggered in the characteristic sailor gait, schoolchildren, at the impressionable age of 15 or over, began to want to look like the sea men, and if they looked like them, it was no wonder that they started also talking like them (p149). University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 15 From the foregoing, Dadzie‟s (1985) view on the genesis of SP is clear that it was evolved in Ghana. However, the obvious question remains: what is the origin of the seamen‟s pidgin? That answer helps us to know what pidgin SP is based on. Was GhaPE evolved in Ghana or was it i m p o r t e d ? Dadzie explains that “Kroo Brofo” [a synonym for GhaPE] was named after the Liberian labourers and deck hands on ships, who were of the Kroo tribe of Liberia, because they spoke Pidgin English. Another possible source through which Pidgin English came to be spoken in Ghana was through migrant workers from Nigeria, especially the lower rank military troops who had earlier populated the Ghanaian army (Dako, 2002a). Dako therefore argues that no wonder Pidgin English was at a point in Ghana referred to as as Abongo Brofo [English of the army] (p.55). Dako (2013a) also asserts that before Ghana‟s independence there was “a red lantern district in down town Accra”, where many of the sex workers originated from Riverine/Niger Delta areas of Nigeria, and that they conducted their business in pidgin. Dako‟s (2002a, 2013b) argument seeks to explain that Ghana did not have a need for a pidgin language since over 60% of Ghanaian could speak Twi, a local language (Dako, 2002, p.53). This position asserts that a pidgin language could not have developed in Ghana. The other side of the argument has it that a pidgin did develop in Ghana. Following Spencer (1971), Huber (1999) argues that there could have been a Ghanaian pidgin resulting out of the Portuguese‟ long contact with the West African people. Huber then reasons that the said pidgin might have been relexified by the English when they took over the Gold Coast. The argument is supported by Huber (1999), who says the presence of some Portuguese lexical items in GhaPE and SP is proof enough. These words include: Pikin-child, Dash-gratuity, to present, Sabi-know, University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 16 Palaver-speech, contention, trouble, Fetish-protective charm (p.25). It is therefore not surprising some of these words have worked their way into Ghanaian English. One can mention words like palaver and dash, for instance, which are found in Ghanaian literary works, advertisements, and the media. On the genesis of pidgin in Ghana, one may conclude that the paucity of research in this area continues to fuel the controversy. Looking at the research findings available, however, one can say that the two theories are possible in the Ghanaian context. Whichever theory is a more authentic one will be established by subsequent findings. 1.5 Student Pidgin (SP) in its Ghanaian Sociolinguistic Context In the Ghanaian sociolinguistic context, SP does not fit squarely into the frame of a pidgin. Reasons to support this claim are numerous. In the first place, SP has not evolved to fill a linguistic void as stated by DeCamp (1971) concerning pidgins (Dako, 2013; Dako & Bonnie, 2013; p.152). The common knowledge that SP is spoken among the youth of the same ethnic group is confirmed by many studies. On the university campuses and in the dormitories, the speakers of SP are multi-linguals who have at least one language in common as asserted by Dako and Bonnie (2013): “SP cannot be classified as a contact language…for Ghanaian students have English in common, and the majority also speak Akan, an indigenous lingua franca of Ghana” (p.117). The situation described by Dako and Bonnie is not any different from that in this study area, where most of the SP girls have Ewe as L1, but still speak SP among themselves (see Appendix B). University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 17 Again, scholars agree that a pidgin has a reduced grammatical structure as claimed by Hymes (1971), DeCamp, (1971) and Crystal (1991). However, studies by Wiredu (2013), Baiden (2013), Osei-Tutu (2006), Forson (2006) and this current study, prove the contrary about SP. The code under consideration here has full-fledged syntactic, morphological and semantic mechanisms for the expression of meaning. Baiden (2013), for instance, declares that “speakers of Student Pidgin employ various word-formation processes to satisfy their communicative needs” (p.1). Baiden‟s position is this is contrary to Thomason‟s (2001) assertion that “most pidgins and creoles either lack morphology entirely or have very limited morphological resources compared with those of the lexifier and other input languages” (p.168). SP therefore does not fit into Thomason‟s (2001) description of pidgins because the assertion of lack of morphology in pidgins is not entirely true about SP. Taken from another perspective, we examine SP against DeCamp‟s (1971) position that a pidgin „…is characterized by a limited vocabulary, an absence of many grammatical devices, such as number and gender, and a drastic reduction of redundant features (p.51) [emphasis is mine]. This position on pidgins cannot be true of SP. Studies by Osei-Tutu, Baiden, Dako and Bonnie as well as this study show that speakers of SP use strategies like coinages, grammaticalization and relexifiacation to create new words in SP. It is also observed that because speakers of SP have access to SE, they easily borrow from the lexifier. Dako (2002a), for instance, observes that speakers of SP switch between SE and SP, thereby baptizing many lexemes into SP. This assertion is supported by Osei-Tutu (2008) who observes that SP has numerous synonyms for various reasons. DeCamp‟s (1971) assertion about pidgins cannot in anyway apply to SP University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 18 because the code does not suffer poverty of vocabulary. Valued against these observations, one can say that SP cannot be counted as a pidgin in the strict sense of the terminology. However, based on the above knowledge about SP, the literature variously describes SP as an „argot‟, „sociolect‟, a „Ghanaian Youth Language‟, „Male Youth Language‟ and so on (Forson, 1996; Dako & Bonnie, 2013; Dako 2013; Baiden, 2013 and Rupp 2013). All these scholars agree that the speakers of SP have among other languages Standard English (SE) in common, hence those descriptions. The tag „argot‟ was used by Forson (1996) to describe SP when his study found that the code was an in-group language used to foster solidarity among male speakers who sometimes would coin their own vocabulary to describe their peculiar experiences. By so doing, the speakers of SP are able to differentiate themselves from the uninitiated. They do this to have fun. This attribute of SP, therefore qualifies it to be called a Youth Language. Characteristic of a Youth Language SP exudes the power of “identity construction” (Eckert, 2000, p. 41). Examining SP as an African Youth Language, the code conforms to the one essential trait of African Youth Languages, in that, we agree with Kiessling and Mous (2004) that the code has been evolved by urban youth who were found in prestigious secondary schools in southern Ghana. In recent times, the code has developed beyond what it has originally been. Studies show that speakers of SP like those of any other African Youth Language are “continuously creating their own languages in order to set themselves apart from the older generation” (p. 303). This attribute is confirmed by many findings including this study (see Section 4.5.4.0). Many studies also have found many similarities between SP and other African languages like University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 19 Nouchi (Abidjan, Cộte D‟Ivoire), Shona Street Lingo (Zimbabwe), Camfranglais (Yaounde- Douala, Cameroon), Indoubil (Brazaville, Congo), Sheng (Nairobi, Kenya), Iscamto (Johannesburg, South Africa) and many others. Dako and Bonnie (2013) are of the opinion that SP is an African Youth Language based on the argument that „Urban youth languages tend to have their basis in another language that is also spoken in the city by the same youth‟ (Kiessling and Mous 2004, p.304). Speakers of SP in this context speak SE, which is the lexifier of SP, as well as the local Kwa languages that form the substrates of SP. However, SP differs from a typical African Youth Language in some respects. As observed by Dako (2013) and many others, SP is restricted to students of higher institutions and their alumni and not a code used as a contact language. Assessing SP in its Ghanaian sociolinguist context, it will be a bit out of place to still refer to it as a male youth language as per the findings in this study. SP is a code begun by urban secondary school boys but has now found roots everywhere, even among semi-urban senior high school girls. Going by Dako and Bonnie (2013), one can best and neutrally refer to SP as a sociolect, a social in-group language that is embraced by a social class [in this case students of higher institutions and their alumni] irrespective of gender. 1.6 The Study Area Ho is the capital town of the Volta Region, one of the ten national administrative divisions in Ghana. Lying between Mount Adaklu and Mount Galenukui (Togo Atakora Range) Ho is also the capital of Ho Municipality, and the capital of former British Togoland. The town h a s University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 20 a settlement population of 96,213 people [based on 2012 estimates]. Ho is home to some tertiary institutions such as the University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ho Polytechnic, Evangelical Presbyterian University College, Nurses‟ Training Schools (Community Health & RGN) and so on. There are about twelve senior high schools, three of which (including EPC Mawuko Girls‟ Senior High School) are public/mission schools. Of all the languages spoken in Ho English, Ewe and Akan (encompassing dialects like Akwapim Twi, Asante Twi, Fante) are the languages of radio broadcasting in the region. Volta Star Radio, a subsidiary of Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (the national broadcaster) broadcasts programmes in indigenous Ewe and Akan and as well as relays programmes from its mother station (Radio Ghana) in Accra. There were at the time of this research seven-radio stations in Ho, five of them being private enterprises. Ho has three public boarding schools and several private second cycle schools with boarding facilities, which house students from all ten regions of Ghana and beyond. There is therefore an indication of inter-ethnic interactions among the Ghanaian people and their languages. 1.7 Statement of the Problem Pidgins in Ghana have not received the necessary research attention, accounting for the number of unresolved controversies about its true origin and other linguistic factors. Even the few researchers that have looked at pidgin mainly focused on the sociolinguistic aspects of the code (Dadzie, 1985; Dako, 2000, 2002b; Pipkins, 2004). Few of them however looked at the linguistic aspects of the code. Osei-Tutu (2008) for instance has looked at the semantic dimensions of the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 21 code, while Baiden (2013) and Wiredu (2013) have studied the morphological processes of word formation and a syntactic structure of the nominal group respectively. Even these three linguistic studies looked at the SP of male speakers only. Studies over the years have shown that women always aspire towards the standard and most prestigious code available (Eckert, 1989 p2.5; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992 p.5-4). This is true per findings in Ghana, where some female students of University of Ghana claim they do not want to corrupt their SE by speaking SP. The other aspect of the problem is contained in Bloomfield‟s (1933) observation that a pidgin is a language variety with reduced grammar and vocabulary. DeCamp (19971, p.15) as quoted in Romaine (1988) supports Bloomfield‟s position with the observation that a pidgin “…is characterised by a limited vocabulary, an elimination of many grammatical devices such as number and gender, and a drastic reduction of redundant features.” Looking at the two positions, it therefore came as a surprise when some girls on the Evangelical Presbyterian Mawuko Church Mawuko Girls‟ SHS football team were heard fluently speaking SP among t h e m s e l v e s . However, following Eckert‟s (2003) observation that “girls lead their cohorts overall more than boys in the use of advanced variants in urban, suburban and mixed variable” (p137), the researcher decided to investigate the topic under discussion. We cannot but agree with Eckert‟s assertion that the use of variant and deviant forms could be linked more to the “aspects of social practice that permeate the school,” and not necessarily with gender (p.137-138). The researcher believes that the use of SP, a phenomenon believed to be a daring attempt at deviancy by boys, and a phenomenon that developed into a code for the male youth from GhPE, could be investigated in an all-female University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 22 educational institution. Taken into consideration the fact that pidgins are supposed to have a less developed grammar, the topic is worth researching. Literature available indicates that there has so far been no study , solely, on the use of SP among female speakers at the senior high school level, neither has any study yet been conducted on the syntactic characteristics of the verbal group in SP. The poverty of research in these two areas has necessitated this study. This study therefore hopes to add to the journal of academic discourse by contributing knowledge on the study of the verbal group in the SP of female senior high school speakers. 1.8 Research Questions The research project will be seeking answers to the following questions: i. What is the syntactic composition of the verbal group in female SP? ii. What are the syntactic functions of the verbal group in female SP? iii. Is the verbal group in female SP able to express TMA? 1.9 Aims and Objectives of the Study The following are the general aims and objectives of the study. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 23 i. To find out the veracity of the report of SP being spoken among female senior high school students. ii. To find out if the SP spoken among female SHS is a complete system of communication. 1.10 Hypothesis of the Study The hypothesis of this research work is that the SP spoken by EPC Mawuko Girls‟ SHS has a verbal group well composed and developed to express those syntactic and grammatical functions of a verbal group in the code. We hypothesize that the verbal group of female SP expresses tense, mood and aspect (TMA) as well as being variously complemented. 1.10 Theoretical Framework The researcher has adopted Traditional Grammar as the main theoretical framework for this study. For justification of this choice and a full discussion on the framework, see Section 2.2 and Chapter Three. 1.11 Relevance/Justification of the Study Many of the earlier findings indicate that SP a preserve of the males who use it as a solidarity language. Forson (1996) calls it an argot. Works on the University of Ghana campus Dako (2002 a&b, 2013), Frimpong (2008), Dzameshie (2011) have indicated that some female students of the university admitted to speaking it but the speakers are in the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 24 minority. However, no research has yet confirmed senior high school girls using the code among themselves. Literature available indicates that girls speak SP to their brothers, male friends and boyfriends to be able to fit into “male company” (Dako 2002 a &b). This study therefore fills a research gap by finding out the veracity of the existence of SP among senior high school girls. The study also finds out if the code as used among the girls is just some auxiliary language formed, used and discarded on the go or whether it is a stabilized pidgin like SP. 1.12 Delimitation of the Study The most noticeable limitation of this study is that it was conducted using only samples of SP as spoken and used by some selected female students of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church Girls‟ Senior High School in Ho. The inference of this is that the results of the study cannot be rigidly applied to other secondary and post-secondary institutions in the country. This is worth noting because, as stated earlier in the study, there is a high degree of variability in the lexicon of the SP spoken in the various tertiary institutions in the country although the syntactic base is virtually the same. (Huber, 1999; Taiwiah, 2008). The study was on a Ghanaian pidgin but the focus was on the institutionalized/student variety, the type spoken among the alumni and students of high institutions. Consequently, one cannot rigidly apply the results and findings in this study to the variety of pidgin Huber (1999, p.141) calls „non-institutionalised‟. Again, because the focus was the syntactic study of the verbal group in the SP of female University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 25 speakers, the concentration of the analysis focuses on this aspect of linguistics, leaving such other branches as morphology, phonology, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. For this reason, factors responsible for the adoption of a male code among young female senior high school students are ignored in this study. In gleaning the data however, references are made to other aspects of linguistics when necessary. 1.13 Organization of the Study The study is divided into five chapters and segmented as follows. CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION i. Introduction ii. Background to the Study iii. Linguistic Landscape of Ghana iv. Pidgin in Ghana v. Student Pidgin in its Ghanaian Sociolinguistic Context vi. A Description of the Study Area: EPC Mawuko Girls‟ Senior High School, Ho vii. Statement of the Problem viii. Research Questions ix. Hypothesis of the Study x. Delimitations of the study University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 26 xi. Significance/Justification of the Study xii. Organization of the study CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND LITERATURE REVIEW i. Introduction ii. Related Literature iii. Methodology CHAPTER 3: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK i. Theoretical Framework CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS OF DATA i. Syntactic Analysis of Data CHAPTER 5: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION i. Introduction ii. Findings iii. Recommendations iv. Conclusion University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 27 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW & METHODOLOGY 2.1 LITERATURE REVIEW The earliest mention of a Ghanaian pidgin in an intellectual research dates to the 1970s when Boadi (1971) and Sey (1973) drew attention to the injection of the argot into the social network of Ghana. The seeming neglect of this study area in Ghana can be attributed to two reasons: a) that pidgin use is an alien phenomenon in Ghana (Huber 1999; Dako, 2002b); b) pidgins and creoles worldwide have not received any research attention until somewhere in the second half of the last century for various sociolinguistic reasons (Hudson, 2003, p. 62; Holm, 2004, p. 2; Wardhaugh, 2010, p. 53; Hymes, 1971, p. 3; Todd, 1990, p. 1). These combinations of factors, supported by the circumstances under which pidgins evolved in Ghana, have made the code in Ghana less attractive, compared to other varieties of WAPE in neighbouring Anglophone West African countries (Huber, 1999; Ofulue, 2012;). This notwithstanding, there have been some ground-breaking works on pidgins in Ghana, conducted to test sociolinguistic variables (Dadzie, 1985; Forson, 1996; Taiwiah, 1998, Dako, 2000, 2002, 2013; Dzameshie, 2001; Pipkins, 2004; Rupp, 2013; Dako & Yitah, 2012 , Dako & Bonnie, 2013,etc). There have, however, been few works that looked at pidgin in Ghana with some attention to its linguistic features, including Huber, (1999), Dako (2002), Osei-Tutu, (2008), Henaku (2011), Wiredu (2013) and Baiden (2013). The seemingly universal negative attitude to pidgins is a reflection of what was thought to be its origin. It is an issue that stems from language attitudes worldwide. Many scholars say pidgins University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 28 and creoles, for the most part, have not enjoyed much publicity and academic attention till lately (Wardhaugh, 2010). This position was earlier stated by Hymes (1971), cited in Wardhaugh (2010, p.53) who explains that before the 1930s, pidgins and creoles were noticeably ignored by linguists and researchers who considered these languages as “marginal”, “haphazard”, and so on (Todd, 1990, p. 1; Holm, 2004, p. 1). Other words such as “degeneration”, “deviation” and many more were used to describe pidgins and creoles. Some linguists, Wardhaugh maintains, were afraid of being associated with these codes. The reasons underlining this attitude are explained by Hudson (2003:62) who believes that because pidgins were associated with slaves and the slave trade, they [pidgins] ipso facto acquired low reputations from the outset. Pidgins, scholars say, came to be associated with people considered stupid, and who could not speak the “proper language” of their masters, corroborating the theory that a language is judged by the “status and prestige” of its speakers (Edwards, 1982; Schmied, 1991, cited in Dzameshie, 2001, p. 4). Holm (2010) describes this attitude as one stemming out of “contempt”. In Ghana, as indicated in Chapter One, there are two main varieties of Pidgin English: the basilectal and the acrolectal. The difference between the two types of the same code can be attributed to the sprining up of second-cycle institutions in Ghana over the years. The type spoken by the elite or the acrolectal is what is called SP. The documented negative attitudes towards SP are much more than we see in the case of GhPE because in recent times, the attention of researchers has mainly been on SP because it [SP] is now “gaining acceptability as a sociolect”, particularly among school leavers (Dako, 2001, p. 144). Outside Ghana, the other two varieties of WAPE, namely Nigerian Pidgin (NP) and University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 29 Cameroonian Pidgin (CamP) are not as safe from stigmatization and threat as one might imagine. Even in Nigeria, where pidgin shows signs of creolization, negative attitudes towards the Nigerian Pidgin cannot pass without comment (Dadzie, 1985). Dzameshie (2001, p. 6) quoting Barbag-Stoll claims “educated Nigerians” take offense to being addressed in NP. Also, Ekpeyong (2008) cited in Wiredu (20013) says “most pidgin expressions used in Nigerian literature written in English are spoken by characters of „“low social standing”‟ (162). The problem of stigmatization is not any different in Cameroon when we look critically at CamP. Barely two years after Sala (2009) extolled the virtues of CamP, describing it as an important language filling a void, and a language of the media and the Bible in Cameroon, Atechi (2011) has come in looking at a dying CamP, which educational authorities there threatened to ban. The Cameroonian educational authorities thought CamP was a kind of “bad English” responsible for the abysmal performance of students in Standard English (Atechi, 2011, p .1). Focusing on Ghana, the stigmatization of both GhaPE and SP is not any different from that of both NP and CamP, if not worse. Many writers on Ghanaian pidgins acknowledge that there is some stigma attached to the codes (Wiredu, 2013, p. 183). This stigmatization is easy to explain, looking at the sociolinguistic and the historical factors that gave birth to pidgins in Ghana. Even in the case of the basilectal variety called GhaPE, those who spoke the code were people of low repute. As Dako (2002a) and Huber (1999) assert, these [speakers] were labourers and illiterate workers coming from outside the borders of Ghana. Following Ekpeyong (2008), Dako and Yitah (2012) assert that in some Ghanaian literary works, literary characters of low University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 30 education and prestige speak Broken English/ “Kru Brofo,” a code that many a non-linguist associates with a pidgin. This stems from the misinformation that both Pidgin English and “Kru Brofo” are the same code. Beyond the literary pages, stigmatization against pidgins in Ghana is evident. Judging by how pidgins came to be spoken in Ghana, many are those who link the language with the lower uneducated sections of society. It therefore has a low status in Ghana (Frimpong, 2012). Corroborating this, Dako (2013) recounts the experience of advertisers using Pidgin English to run a television commercial for Ariel, a washing powder. The criticisms that dogged the advertisement, she recounts, necessitated its [advertisement‟s] immediate withdrawal. Dako recounts how the targeted clientele of the advertisement tried to equate the washing powder with illiterates. Literature available on pidgin in Ghana suggests a lot more work has been done on SP than on GhaPE, and many of these studies have actually looked more at the attitude of the public towards the code. Apart from Boadi (1994) cited in Adika 2012:16) who called for the institutionalization of the code to be used as lingua franca, several people have condemned it. In recent times, Mr. J .H. Mensah, a former minister of state as well as Prof Kwadwo Asenso-Okyere (a former Vice Chancellor, University of Ghana) are among the prominent persons advocating for the code‟s condemnation (Adika, 2012; Rupp, 2013). The condemnation of the code and the call for its ban, in some sectors of society, is yet to achieve any effect. As one can see, SP now permeates almost every aspect of high school and tertiary students as well as school leavers‟ informal conversation. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 31 Some researchers have disproved the claim that pidgin is absent from formal engagements in Ghana (Frimpong, 2013, p. 117). However, the role of pidgin in the context of the claim is not any more than a few Nigerian pidgin gospel songs sang in select charismatic churches in the Ghanaian capital (Accra). Even some of the churches sampled for the survey did not have a single pidgin song in their music repetoire. Frimpong‟s (2013) assertion must have been a bit hasty, since he even documented that some of the respondents in his survey expressed reservations about the choice of pidgin songs in church. Yet it is interesting to hear pidgin songs in Ghana, enjoyed outside the domain of the church, though sung by the same people who could have disproved of their [the songs‟] use in church. This suggests that Ghanaians do not think Pidgin English and religion can mix, however, the same code can be used in songs outside the church. This goes to confirm Huber‟s (1999) assertion that Pidgin English is used for entertainment in Ghana. In agreeing with Huber, one can recount how “Things We Do for Love” [a popular Ghanaian television series] caught up with Ghanaian youth, obviously, because the main character (Pusher) and his street friends always speak SP. In fact, the only gathering that allows SP to be used (even though informally) is the meeting of the Commonwealth Hall 1 Junior Common Room (JCR), as asserted by Benjamin Taiwiah, in a newspaper article (The Daily Graphic of 13 th August, 2013). He 1 An all-male hall in the University of Ghana known for its sporadic display of male exuberance and the use of unconventional language, and SP University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 32 recounts how the unofficial businesses are conducted in SP in that hall. It is also common knowledge that during JCR elections, candidates who show no sign of speaking SP in that hall have a slim chance of becoming JCR executives. Beyond the JCR elections and the unofficial JCR meetings are the Old Vandals Association (OVA) gatherings nationwide. This is an association of all Commonwealth Hall alumni. Such meetings are conducted mostly in SP, yet serious businesses both within and outside the hall, are conducted in SE. Apart from these meetings and such like, there is hardly any known public use of SP acceptable in Ghana. So far, Frimpong (2012) is the only work that has researched the relationship between SP and religion. Many other researchers have look at SP from the perspective of its gender dominance, trying to either corroborate or debunk earlier findings. In recent years, the attention of researchers has mainly been on SP (the acrolectal GhaPE) and not the basilectal (Dako, 2001, p. 139). This, research for instance, looks at the verbal group in female high school students speaking SP because the code is fast gaining acceptability as a sociolect among female speakers. Contrary to earlier views, female high school students speak the lect even if many deny it. Out of the few works on pidgins in Ghana, a majority have looked at attitudes towards them [pidgins]. Apart from Osei-Tutu (2008), Dako (2002b), Henaku (2011), Baiden (2013), Forson (2006) and Wiredu (2013), the rest of the studies have been predominantly sociolinguistic. Huber (1999), for one, is so far the most comprehensive University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 33 work on the code, having explored the phenomenon from historical, socio-cultural, linguistic and sociolinguistic angles. It is common knowledge in Ghana that women and pidgins do not mix. Since the “mone na han bak na graun 2 ” days when pidgin-speaking women were associated with prostitution in the Gold Coast 3 , until recently, no woman would like to be heard speaking SP openly. We can even attest that there were some female lecturers in the Department of English 4 , University of Ghana (during this research), who were well versed in SP or some form of the WAPEs but did not speak it openly. For one thing, “the contemporary educated woman in Ghana” does not see any social or financial gain in speaking SP (Dako, 2013, p. 222-223). This position is a support for stronger voice in Taiwiah (1998) whose survey on the University of Ghana, Legon campus has only 8% of his study female population saying they speak SP. Based on his findings, Taiwiah (1998) therefore proclaimed that SP was unlikely to achieve any importance in “female c o m m u n i c a t i v e functions” in Legon. This position has, however, been debunked by subsequent findings a decade later. Worthy of note, however, are the responses given by the 92% of the female population in Taiwiah‟s (1998) study on the University of Ghana campus. Their reasons for not speaking the code are mostly sociolinguistic, bordering on their prestige value. Findings 2 An expression used by Dako (2013), meaning, “If you give me money, I will lie down for you” a statement attributed to prostitutes. 3 Ghana, before independence in 1957 was called The Gold Coast. 4 The lecturers referred to here published and presented conference papers on WAPEs University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 34 corroborate this finding by stating that girls would rather not speak Pidgin English in Ghana, but might in exceptional cases speak it among themselves. (Huber, 1999, p. 147; Dako, 2013, p. 225). A decade after Taiwiah‟s (1998) proclamation, Frimpong (2008) finds on the same University of Ghana campus that 41% of the female respondents admitted speaking SP. The 51% who did not speak it gave various reasons for their position, one of which was being that as ladies 5 who aspired to the best form of proficiency in SE, speaking SP was, thus, detrimental to their goal. This is no surprise since this notion applies to many languages, dialects and sociolects worldwide. Our main concern is that throughout sociolinguistic history, women are found to be the preservers and speakers of the highest standard code available (Huber, 1999; Hudson, 2001; Eckert, 1989; Bakker & Mous, 1994). Scholars argue, that because of gender relegation, women in many cultural settings are not allowed to compete for the top spot with men. As a consolation therefore, they heavily depend on such symbolic resources, such as “language, appearance,” and so on, and by so doing, women always aspire towards the standard and most prestigious code available (Eckert, 1989, p. 25; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992, p. 5-4). These explain why ladies are not in any way enthused by getting caught up in the wave of SP in Ghana; and even if a lady 5 must speak SP at all, she does it only to fit into male company (Taiwiah, 2008; Dako & Bonnie, 2013; Dako, 2013a; Rupp, 2013). 5 In Ghanaian English, a “lady” is an educated woman who is respected by all and sundry. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 35 On the contrary, for the young male SP speaker in Ghana, the ability to speak the code is a rite of passage and initiation; it is like the freedom to own and wear one‟s own type and style of clothing. It is more like being identified with the big guys 6 in town- it is not only a code that signals linguistic meaning; it is an identity marker (Dako & Bonnie, 2013, p. 118; Dako, 2013 p.156; Forson, 1996). Both Dako and Bonnie (2013) and Dako (2013) argue that the code is Associated with the male youth in Ghana who have attained the age of independence. The code‟s association with the male youth is indicated by how the various works refer to it. Dako (2000, 2002a, 2002b,) calls it a “gender specific language,” obviously referring to the male gender; Forson 1996 calls it an “argot” that is used for in-group discussion and communication among the male youth. In Ghana, therefore, the code is a preserve of the male youth who have had some secondary or tertiary education (Rupp, 2013; Dako & Bonnie, 2013). As indicated earlier and as per my own findings, SP may be called a youth language. SP in Ghana corresponds to Halliday‟s (1994) model of antilanguages (cited in Kiessling & Mous 2004) which, among other things, are used to create identities among the speakers. In reality, SP speakers, like other urban youth, try to exclude “outsiders” from their conversions by creating a language which they alone understand, and the purpose is to have fun (Kiessling & Mous, 1994, p. 303). Commenting on SP, Osei-Tutu (2008) believes each SP speech community normally uses a “set of lexical items” that are peculiar to the milieu of the speakers (p.12). Given 6 In Ghanaian English, “guy” means an independent young male old enough to take personal responsibility. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 36 that SP has its own “phonological, morphological, and semantic” system like any other language would (ibid), Forson (1996) calls it an “argot”. Looking at the parameters, the composition and function of the code, SP is a “pidgin- sound alike” language, because it has some syntactic and stylistic features of a typical WAPE, but by function is a youth language (Dako, 2013b; Baiden, 2013; Dako & Bonnie, 2013). Typical of a youth language, SP uses “far-fetched extension or change of the meaning of words with the function of insult, ridicule, exaggeration or simple enjoyment and play” (Kiessling & Mous, 2004, p. 324). This is exactly what SP does, as Baiden (2013) has found in the morphological processes of SP. His findings indicate that the study population (the University of Ghana students) summoned morphological processes and word-formation processes like “reduplication, borrowing, coinages, clipping, compounding” to contort meaning, a feature characteristic of youth languages (p. 86). Most of the coinages, Baiden has found, come from Akan and Ga, are mainly vocabulary associated with youthful discourse. Whilst the male speakers of SP may be happy naming themselves as identity creators, there is different view about the phenomenon. Following Dako (2000), both Pipkins (2004) and Rupp (2013) believe SP speakers do so because of the “performance pressure” associated with SE which they [speakers of SP] try to avoid. Their argument is built around the view that SP speakers agree the code is not so strict with grammatical and syntactic rules (ibid). Yet, pushing the argument further, Rupp (2013) draws a parallel between SP and Fuller‟s (2009) analytic study of 10 German boys aged five years who spoke “Mock English” (substandard variety) to reinforce their position as University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 37 creating a face-saving attitude in challenging linguistic situations (Fuller, 2009, cited in Rupp, 2013). The boys, it is said, crafted their art in such a way that if they made a mistake, it would be accepted as a joke. Rupp therefore sought to equate the substandard “Mock English” of the 5 German 10 year olds in that study with SP of Ghana. This comparison and its basis contradict what we already know of SP. Frimpong (2008), for instance, documents the views of some male SP speakers who believe female speakers were bastardizing the code (p.12). The male speakers‟ argument was that SP has its own mechanism and systems for signaling meaning. Frimpong‟s (2008) position is supported by Osei-Tutu (2008), who says SP has phonological, morphological and semantic elements just as any other language (p.9). These observations point to the fact that SP is a language on its own and not a bastardised from of SE. Dako (2002a) for instance describes SP a stabilized code with lexical and structural possibilities that have gone far. If this is so then it cannot be described as a code without rules in which mistakes are not easily noticeable. Based on these, therefore, one can say that Rupp‟s (2013) comparison should have rather been with Broken English and not with SP. On the process of obscuring meaning in SP there are so many ways by which this is achieved. Osei-Tutu (2008) has made some observations on the semantic analysis of the code. The study found the following processes used to obscure meaning: “semantic shift, semantic extension, semantic weakening, and semantic amelioration.” Evidence in the data at hand shows that the SP spoken by girls shows the same predilection as evidenced in coinages, borrowings as well as grammaticalization of certain items, thereby baptizing them into the verbal group. There is of interest the borrowing of the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 38 French word “finir,” for instance, which functions in the data as a lexical verb and as a completive, used as a synonym for the existing SP word “finish” (See Section 4.5.4.2.1). The data has found so many other new words that many a male SP speaker who encounters my study population for the first time cannot comprehend. We have such words as “coma 7 ,” “apapa” “Mampi” and the rest, which the analysis did not cover because they [the words] are not verbs. This practice supports Osei-Tutu (2008), who suggests that so many synonyms exist in SP because each group of speakers [student group] brings in their own “slang items” (p.98). In EPC Mawuko Girls‟ Senior High School, for instance, such items are leisurely referred to as “Mawuko Lexicon”. The addition of peculiar items and “lexicon” gives SP different lexical item that later constitute dialects of the same code. This shows that SP is growing and is becoming stabilized. We must, however, be quick to add that those characteristics of a youth language under discussion here are mostly associated with the male youth as the literature available suggests. Kiessling and Mous (2004), for instance, observe that the role played by boys in the formation and use of youth languages is more dominant than that of girls (p.317). While this may not be entirely true in some circumstances, we can for now accept this with caution in the case of SP. It is true that SP was initiated by boys but that young women are encroaching on the code, if not taking it over. My study population [all girls] speaks a variety of SP whose vocabulary items are peculiar to their milieu. As indicated by the data and its analysis, SP spoken by the study population in this study has 7 Coma”: banku [a local heavy carbohydrate meal made of maize and cassava flour served in the school canteen. Students doze off in class after taking this meal]. “Apapa”: toilet. “Mampi”: BIHECO University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 39 developed to the extent that it is has benefitted fully from a TMA analysis of its verbal group based on features identified by creolists worldwide. Though the study is not quantitative enough to measure the extent of SP‟s spread among teenage female speakers, there is enough evidence that SP, in this case, is beginning to lose its feature as a code for only the male youth. This is corroborated in the study of SP by Pipkins (2004), Rupp (2013) and Dako (2013b). Pipkin (2004), for one, has conducted a research in Cape Coast. She worked with 60 student respondents from 3 schools: one mixed school, one boys‟ school and one girls‟ school in that municipality. In Wesley Girls‟ High School [a girls‟ school], she found that, 12 out of 20 respondents [all girls] accounting for 60% admitted to speaking SP (p. 24). In Ghana National College, (a mixed school), 7 out of 10 female respondents, representing 70% said they spoke SP. This was about the first time such high numbers of female speakers in an SP survey were recorded. Considering bilingualism and its measurement as tricky, there are a few questions to be asked. Pipkins‟ (2004) female respondents could be “productive bilinguals”, “passive bilinguals”, “emerging bilinguals”; or even “infant bilinguals” but are all lumped together as bilingual SP girls (Baker & Collin, 2011, p.3). The high figures used in referring to SP girls could have been broken down. Though the survey is silent on how the respondents were selected for the survey [as University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 40 regards the sampling methods of that quantitative survey, and the high figures notwithstanding], some findings of Pipkins‟ in a way corroborate earlier positions when she states that the girls did not speak SP among themselves. The SP girls in that survey said they spoke it in order to fit into male company, and this is not different from what Dako (2014) and Taiwiah (2008) have earlier discovered. Rupp (2013), also surveying three groups of students on the University of Cape Coast campus in 2012, posits that female students were speaking the code. The survey was, however, silent on whether the female speakers spoke the code among themselves or not. But for one thing it confirmed that many a female SP speaker uses the code to fit into male company, by speaking with mostly a boyfriend, with brothers or with male mates. In the case of Rupp the SP girls used the code to communicate with “illiterates/illiterate people” (p.17-18). Rupp‟s study population included three groups: i. 65 first year Arts students [35 males and 30 females] ii. 50 second/third year students Arts students [14 males and 35 females] iii. 76 biology students of different year groups [57 males and 17 females] In all, she dealt with 191 students, [106 males and 85 females] the three groups had the following percentages representing females who were SP girls: 15%, 64% and 8% respectively (p.18). We shall therefore have a weighted average of 29% of her female study population as SP girls. Based on this outcome, Rupp (2013) asserts that SP was spreading among female speakers in a n “increasing number of contexts” (p.13). University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 41 Dako (2013) is the major turning point as far as sociolinguistic research on SP is concerned. For the first time, a research work has openly acknowledged that young women were encroaching on the code once reserved for the masculine fraternity. The paper argues that the young women involved “speak the code in part to create identities for themselves” (p.217). Following Fairclough (1992), Dako, (2013a) argues that the new trend could be described as “democratization of discourse” (p.223). Other reasons cited are age, globalization, lack of competition with the male counterparts in SE, and many more. For one thing, since SP‟s componential analysis of identity includes high school/tertiary education, it should not be too surprising that female university students are beginning to “encroach” on the use of SP because they live in the university community within which it is spoken. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1995) describe this trend as a “habitual choice”, citing the instance of a typical suburban American high school girl‟s decision to “become a popular Jock or rebellious Burnout” as a personal choice. Nortier (2001), cited in Kiessling and Mous (2004, p. 317-318) states: “when girls do show youth language features in their speech, they do so in greater quantity” [emphasis is mine]. This may not be exactly the case with Dako (2013a) who says “Only exceptionally did any respondent report the code in conversation with other females” (p. 225). There is therefore the need for sociolinguistic research that establishes the evidence of intra girls‟ group conversations conducted in SP. A quantitative methodology is most necessary to access the extent of spread this time at the senior high school level. The University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 42 explanation underlying such findings will be to find out what the girls do with SP at the pre-tertiary level. Since the emergence of SP in prestigious senior high schools some decades ago, much effort has been concentrated on how boys are using the language at that level. Since women come across as the custodians of the purest form of any code, it is expedient that a researcher look at SP among the female SHS students from grammatical, phonological, semantic and sociolinguistic angles. In part, this is the gap this research seeks to fill by looking at SP from a syntactic point of view by examining the verbal group in the SP of female Senior High school. As indicated in the methodology, analysis in Chapter Four and the 30 pages of data are intra SP girls‟ conversation (See APPENDIX A). 1.11 METHODOLOGY OVERVIEW The purpose of this survey is to make a linguistic statement about a sociolinguistic phenomenon considered rare: the verbal group in the SP spoken among SHS girls. The approach to this study is purely scientific. This section is a discussion of the approach(es) and methods used in carrying out this study, and with reasons explaining why one method is paradigmatically preferred to another. 1.12 The Research Area The Evangelical Presbyterian Mawuko Girls‟ Senior High School, Ho is chosen for this University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 43 study for a number of reasons. In the first place, the school offers an ideal location for testing the existence of SP among girls since it is a girls‟ school. Knowing that SP is an Urban African Youth Language, Ho can be considered appropriate. Secondly, Dako‟s (2002a) assertion that the start of SP in Ghanaian boarding schools was more or less a daring attempt at deviancy was to be tested to find out if such deviancy could be found in a mission school. The third reason for choosing this school is its strict language policy that insists on the use of SE all the time. At the time of the survey, the school had a population of 1,764. Out of this, 354 were day students while 1,410 were in the boarding house. At the same time, the school had about a hundred teachers of whom twenty taught at least one of the languages in the curriculum (English, Ewe & French). Five teachers in the Languages Department had post-graduate qualifications, whilst five more were studying for post-graduate qualifications in French or English. Mawuko students are noted for their taste for an impeccable rendition of Standard English, making them the Ho municipal debating champions over the years In addition, the best municipal French students are always found in Mawuko, making the school the centre of attraction in the capital. 2.2.3 The Data: Sampling, Data Collection and Transcription Having taught for five years in EPC Mawuko Girls‟ Senor High School, the researcher has over the years many times heard the girls speak SP among themselves, especially during sports events. It was mainly girls on the football team who spoke the code University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 44 among themselves. For the study, nine (9) girls aged between 15 and 25 were chosen from second and third year groups. The mode of selecting the girls for the survey was mainly by snowballing, based on a kind of “close-knit” type of “social network” (Milroy & Milroy, 2010, p.112). There were eight girls from the second year group and one from the third year group (see Appendix B for detailed information on participants). The girl from form three was able invite eight girls from the second year group; obviously, all of them were friends. The imbalance was because the third year group was preparing feverishly for their external examination at the time of the survey. The SP girls were asked to converse in SP, discussing topics that were of interest to the contemporary female teenage Senior High School student. The oldest girl in the group was captain; she manned the recording device since the researcher was not present during the conversations. The conversations were recorded on a Samsung Galaxy Pocket (android) mobile phone. They [conversations] were later transcribed, using quasi-Standard English spelling. The transcribed conversations were broken down into about one thousand and sixty (1,060) “gleanable” sentences and segments for analysis of the verbal group therein. There are two transcription methods used. Pidgin data in the appendix of this document follow a quasi-Standard English spelling while examples in the analyses are phonemically transcribed. Other models of transcription like those of Gumperz, Jefferson and DuBois were not followed because the goal of the research was not sociolinguistic. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 45 The interest was rather grammatical, so the focus was on the verbal group and the quasi- standard English model was thought adequate for the purpose. 2.2.4 Theoretical Framework/Analysis Traditional grammar was adopted as the main theoretical framework, though others were referred to when and where necessary. The unique characteristics of traditional grammar informed this choice. In the first place, traditional grammar is a word-based grammar that begins its analysis from the word level and thus classifies words as categories and starts its analysis from the word level through to the sentence (LaPalombara, 1976, cited in Alduais, 2013, p.39). Again, the choice of traditional grammar was based on its mode of grammatical unit naming method. In this case, mention is made of such terms as subject, object [direct/indirect], complement and so on, so that anybody with some education up to the basic level can identify with such terms (ibid). Since this research is purposed to benefit all researchers: linguists and non-linguists alike, the choice of school grammar with its universally familiar terminology was thought the most appropriate. In gleaning the data, all the transcribed passages were broken down into about one thousand and sixty clauses and “gleanable” constituents, using the Microsoft Word software, 2010 edition. The “gleanable” constituents, however, did not follow any special order; the process was only meant to make verbal group identification and analyses easier. Thereafter, verbs were identified and described. Interpretation of the occurrence of verbal groups in the data was not a comparison with similar structures in University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 46 SE. Instead, the structures were described in their own rights as pertains in pidgins and creoles. The analysis, however, describes syntactically the occurrence of the verbal groups identifying them and showing their affinity to SE, some other pidgin or any of the Kwa languages spoken in Ghana. SP data in the appendix is arranged in multiples of five lines (to the left) and the translations in SE to the right. Turns in conversation are marked by „X‟, since the focus is a syntactic study of the verbal group and not pragmatics. The number of interlocutors in each segment of the data has been stated. Care has been taken to align the transcribed conversation and its translation as accurately as possible. 2.2.5 Presentation of Data Each example of an SP sentence/segment in Chapter Four has four levels. The first level is the phonemic transcription of the pidgin data as found in Appendix A. There is a footnote attached to each first line, [in the analysis] indicating where that particular example can be located in the data. The second line is a grammatical/syntactic description of the structures present in the example, followed by a literal translation of the pidgin statement, being the third line. The last line is the idiomatic translation of how the sentence can best be rendered in SE. If, however, the third line is logical in SE enough, no fourth line/idiomatic translation is provided. To a large extent, the sentences and segments are translated according to context. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 47 CHAPTER THREE THE SYNTACTIC BEHAVIOUR OF VERBS IN ENGLISH Introduction In this chapter, we take a look at the verb from a syntactic point of view. We examine the structure of the verb phrase: the order in which elements occur in the verb phrase, some of its functions and its complementation, as well as how it can be called upon to express tense, mood and modality. 3.0 Verb Forms Since this research is about verbs, it is important to list the forms a verb assumes and the function(s) of those forms in grammar. The regular English verb has five forms whilst an irregular one can have as many as eight or as few as three. These forms are looked at in this section. i. V (base) ii. V-s (3rd person singular present) iii. V-ed1 (the simple past form) iv. V-ing (the present participle) v. V-ed2 (the past participle) University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 48 i. V (base : vote) The V form of the verb is used variously as the following: a) all the present tense except 3rd person singular: I/you/we/they vote b) imperative: Vote early! c) subjunctive: We demand that the minister vote some money for that project. d) the infinitive: i. bare infinitive He cannot vote here. ii. to-infinitive: She failed to vote them out. ii. V-s (3rd person singular present: votes) This form of the verb functions as the 3rd person singular present tense.  He/She/It pays. iii. V-ed1 (the simple past form) This form of the verb has the following uses: the past simple form of the verb. In regular verbs, it is formed by adding –d/ed to the base form of the verb. E.g.  We voted for him last year. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 49 iv. V-ing (The present participle) The V-ing form of the verb has the following functions: a) progressive aspect (be + V-ing) E.g. Indonesia was voting in a crucial election. b) used in -ing participle clauses E.g. Voting earlier than his opponents, the incumbent was able to steal the show. v. V-ed2 (past participle) The V-ed2 form is seen in the following functions: a) The perfective aspect (have + V-ed2) E.g.  Indonesians have voted their first female president into office. b) passive voice (be + V-ed2) E.g. He was voted the BBC African Footballer of the Year by his funs. c) used in -ed participle clauses E.g. Traumatized by the war, the Jewish entrepreneur sought asylum in Alexandria. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 50 3.2.0 Verb Complementation Not all verbs perform the same function. Quirk & Greenbaum (2000), for instance, differentiate between auxiliary verbs and lexical verbs, the lexical verbs being verbs of the open class system. Some of these verbs have the property of complementation, yet, not all these lexical verbs are complemented in the same way. Some take complements; others take one or more objects whilst some combine both attributes of object and complement. On the other hand, some lexical verbs do not require any form of complementation at all. The type and number of complementation present in a given clause is determined by the “potential” of the verb phrase in that clause (Downing & Locke, 2006, p.37). Based on the type of complementation a verb accepts, we shall in this chapter discuss lexical verbs under the following categories: copula, transitive and intransitive. For the purpose of this study, we shall in this chapter limit ourselves to simple verbs and not multi-word and idiomatic verbs. In addition, our verb phrase/ verbal group here is the finite one. 3.2.1 Copula Verbs Copulas, variously named as linking, equative and copulative are those categories of lexical verbs that operate the Subject + Verb + Complement (SVC) structure in English (Eastwood, 2002; Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik, 999; Thakur, 2011, Quirk & Greenbaum, 2000; Downing& Locke, 2006, p. 37). The complement referred here is the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 51 subject complement which, occurring after the copula, refers back to the subject by describing, identifying or characterizing it (Downing& Locke, 2006, p. 85; Kolln, 1994, p .33).This is distinct from the object complement (See 3.3.4). The subject complement is realized by three categories of grammatical units coming either in the form of i. an adjective/adjectival group, ii. a noun/nominal group iii. an adjunct (Eastwood, 2002; Quirk et al 1999). i. Adjectival Complementation The adjectival complementation may be a single adjective or an adjective phrase as we have in the following examples.  The stools are dirty.  The baby waxed great and mighty. In adjectival complementation, the adjective/adjectival phrase is said to be in a predicative position (Aarts, 2001, p. 33). ii. Nominal Complementation The nominal elements complementing a copula range from a simple noun/noun phrase to University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 52 a noun clause. They perform same roles as outlined in Section 3.2.1. Eg.  His name is Jude. (A simple noun complementation)  Karen is a respected sculptor. (A noun phrase complementation)  Billson became the lawyer whom everyone respected. (A noun clause complementation) iii. The Adjunctive Complementation The adjunctive complementation occurs with space adjuncts (Quirk et al 1999, p.55). In this case, the complementing space adjunct becomes an obligatory element of the clause. We state here that the adjunct‟s complementing role is towards the subject of the clause, and not a modification of the verb phrase (Quirk et al 1999, p. 1171).  I am in my final semester.  The money was nowhere to be found. 3.2.2 Types of Copula Verbs Of the copulas, a distinction is made between the current/stative copulas and the resulting/dynamic copulas (Quirk & Greenbaum, 2000, p. 353, Downing & Locke, 2006, p. 88; Quirk et al 1999, p. 1172). i. Current/Stative Copula Verbs Current/stative copula verbs describe a particular state of being that is attributable to the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 53 subject of the clause. They, in this way, describe the current state of the subject. The following copula verbs are employed to express the subject‟s state of being: be, appear, look, seem, smell, sound, taste, remain, keep (ibid). E.g.  Bernice is a spinster. (be)  His name remained Jovinian. (remain) ii. Resulting/Dynamic Copula Verbs This subcategory of copula verbs link the subject to the outcome of a process, or the result of a transformation. The implication of the choice of this type of copula is that the subject has undergone some change or still is in the process of transformation. Some of the verbs in this category are: become, prove, turn, go, grow, run, wax, spring (ibid).  The river turned gold in the sunset. (turn)  The meat surprisingly went bad. (go) 3.3.0 Transitive Verbs A transitive verb admits a direct object or two, which may or may not come with a complement (Quirk, & Greenbaum, 2000, p. 358). The direct object may refer to a person, place, event, or a thing, and this can syntactically be realized mainly by a noun phrase, a finite clause or a non- finite clause (Downing & Locke, 2006, p .95; Quirk & Greenbaum, 2000, p. 358). Transitive verbs are those that when they appear in the active voice can be changed into the passive. We shall in this sect