Dagaare and the Gur Languages Dr. A. Bodomo The University of Hong Kong

Dagaare and the Gur Languages 1. Location and classification: –Dagaare and the Gur languages are situated in the interior parts of West African sub- continent. –They cover countries such Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and the northern parts of the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria.

Gur Location of the Gur family of languages

The most prominent languages of the Gur family are in the Mabia subgroup. We focus on the Mabia subgroup. Bodomo (1994)

The Mabia languages are divided into five main groups. These are: i.Western Mabia ii.Northern Mabia iii.Central Mabia iv.Southern Mabia v.Eastern Mabia Bodomo (1994)

i.Western Mabia It includes Dagaare, Waale, Birifor and Safaliba. ii.Northern Mabia It includes just Moore and its dialectal forms. iii.Central Mabia (also called Gurenne). It includes Frafra, Nankani (Buli, Konni) and Nabit. iv.Southern Mabia It includes Dagbane, Mampruli and Nanuni v.Eastern Mabia It is composed of Kusaal and Talni.

2. Some facts about the languages a.There are no clear boundaries between the languages, but a continuum. E.g. Mampruli may relate to Dagbane or to Kusaal; i.e., Manpruli could belong to Southern Mabia or Eastern Mabia. b.Typological features : i.e., phonological, morphological, and syntactic features

 Phonology:  The languages are marked by preponderance of consonants and a scarcity of vowel phonemes. There are also syllabic nasal usage and tone representation. i. Consonants: –Some consonants are in double articulation. E.g. voiceless labio-velar stop: /kp/ in kpi$ ‘to die’ –Regular allophones often involve /d/ and /r/, and /g/ and /  / across the various languages. –There are limited cases of free variation. E.g. /h/ and /z/ in the Dagaare word, ha  a  / za  ‘all’

ii. Vowels: –There is the feature of vowel harmony (based on Advanced Tongue Root (ATR)) that divides the languages into harmonizing and non-harmonizing languages. harmonizing languages: Western Mabia (e.g. Dagaare and Waale) non-harmonizing languages: The rest of the group –Front rounded vowels and back unrounded vowels are absent in these languages, except in phonetically conditioned environments.

iii. Syllabic nasality: –This is a typological feature in the languages. – Syllabic nasals are often realized as pronouns and particles. E.g.: the first person pronoun /N/ in Dagaare as in m  ba  ‘my father’, n  zu , “my head” and the particle, -N, in Dagaare which is a cliticised form of the polarity marker, la .

iv. Tone: –Gur languages are tone languages. –They are primarily two-toned with cases of downstep (H) in some of the languages. –tones express both lexical and grammatical oppositions. Examples in Dagaare: in the verbs, ‘push’ and da  ‘buy’ in the declarative and hortative readings of pronouns e.g. u  ku  li  la  yi  ri  ‘He went home’ u  ku  li  yi  ri  ‘He should go home’

v. Syllable structure: –Gur languages usually manifest open syllables. –Usually, a close syllable can be reconstructed into an open syllable. e.g. ba$r (CVC) ‘to leave’ could become ba$rI$ (CV.CV).  Morphology: i. Noun classes: –In noun classification, most Niger-Congo languages use a system of class prefixes, but –Gur languages use a system of class suffixes.

–The noun classification is typically based on singular/plural alternations (in relation to the root). –That is, most nouns exist in three forms: the root, the singular, and the plural. E.g. in the Dagaare word for woman/wife: pg- (root), p  ga  (singular), p  gba  (plural) –In this example the singular/plural affixes are -a / -ba. –All nouns that exhibit this (-a / -ba) pattern are categorized into one class.

ii. Verb morphology: –In most of the languages, there is a regular form of marking perfective and imperfective aspect by suffixes on the verbs. –The perfective and imperfective suffixes regularly respond to the vowel harmony feature for languages that have this.  Syntax: i. Word order: –Most Gur languages exhibit the Subject Verb Object order in their basic sentence patterns.

ii. Verb serialization: –A syntactic construction in which two or more lexical verbs may share arguments without intervening connectors. Examples in Dagaare i. O de lagankoma 3sg.take FACT.bookgive1sg. ‘S/he gave me the book.’ ii.Odadaamala l 3sgPASTpush1sgFACT.caus.fall ‘S/he pushed me down.’

3. Description of some Gur languages Moore It is the language of the Mossi. It is the de facto national language in Burkina Faso. It is the most prominent of the Gur languages in terms of the number of speakers and its political importance. It is spoken by about 5 million people in Burkina Faso and about 1 million more in neighboring countries such as Co  te d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo. It is more closely related to Dagara, a variant of the Dagaare language.

Dagbani Including Nanuni, Dagbani is spoken by about 1 ½ million people in Ghana. It is a trade language in and around Tamale, the fourth largest town in Ghana. It is a major language of education and literacy in Dagbon, home of the Dagomba. It is taught in various undergraduate programmes at universities in Ghana. Dagbane is more closely related to Mampruli than all the other languages.

Dagaare Dagaare, including Waale and Birifor, is spoken in north-western Ghana around towns like Wa, Tuna, Jirapa, Lawra and Nandom. It is also spoken in Burkina Faso around towns like Dano and Dissin. Native speakers of Dagaare number up to 2 million. It is taught in primary and secondary schools in Dagao, homeland of the Dagaaba, and at universities in Ghana and Burkina Faso.

Gurenne Including Frafra, Nankanne and Nabit, Gurenne is also has a large number of native speakers, numbering about a million. It is the language of Bolgatanga, one of the cosmopolitan towns in northern Ghana. It is fast becoming a lingua franca in north eastern Ghana for speakers of different languages such as Kusaal, Kasem, Mampruli, Talni, etc. in the Bolgatanga metropolitan area.

Kusaal It is the language of the Kusaasi. It is spoken by about 250,000 people in the extreme north-eastern Ghana around towns like Bawku. It is an important literacy language in the area. It is related to Mampruli.

Mampruli It is the language of the Mamprussi. It is spoken by about 100,000 people around towns such as Gambaga, Nalerigu, and Walewale. It is very closely related to Kusaal and Dagbane. It is quite intelligible to speakers Dagbane and Kusaal.

Buli It is the language of the Bulsa. It has about 65,000 speakers in and around Sandema. It is closely related to the much smaller language, Konni, but quite distinct from all the other major Gur languages.

Kasem It is the language of the Kasena. It belongs to the Grusi subgroup along with other languages such as Sisaali, Chakali, Tampulma, Kabre, Vagla, and Mo. It is spoken around towns such as Navrongo in Ghana, and in adjacent settlements in Burkina Faso. It is spoken by approximately 300,000 people. Kasem, like Dagaare, was one of the first literary languages of northern Ghana, having benefited from early missionary activities.

Sisaali (or Isaaleng) It is the language of the Sisaala. It is spoken around the towns of Tumu, Gwellu and Lambussie in Ghana, and also in adjoining areas of Burkina Faso. It is spoken by about 200,000 people. It is hardly intelligible with the other languages. However, many speakers of Sisaali speak Dagaare as a second language.

Konkomba It belongs to the Gurma group along with languages such as Moba and Bassari. It is also called Likpakpalnli. It is spoken by about 500,000 people. Many speakers of this language speak Dagbane as a second language in their homeland around Saboba and Zabzugu. It is taught in primary schools and there are many literacy programmes involving Konkomba.

4. Conclusion Most of these languages are being used for educational purposes in the communities. Hausa is often thought by many people to be an effective lingua franca in the Gur speaking area but this is hardly a fact. There are serious attempts at functional literacy and mass communication in all these indigenous languages. Gradually, awareness is being raised about the importance of the mother tongues as important languages of mass communication for socio-economic development in this part of West Africa.

Further Reading Barker, P., Peoples, Languages and Religion in Northern Ghana, Ghana Accra: Evangelical Committee, 1986 Bodomo, A. B., Dagaare: Languages of the World Materials No Munchen, Germany: Lincom Europa, 2000 Bodomo, A. B., The Structure of Dagaare, Stanford Monographs in African Languages, Stanford, USA: CSLI publications, 1997 Bodomo, A. B., “Language, Culture, and History in Northern Ghana: An Introduction to the Mabia Linguistic Group”, Nordic Journal of African Studies, vol. 3:2, 1994 Goody, J., The Social Organisation of the LoWiili, London: IAS, 1967 St. John-Parsons, D., Legends for Northern Ghana, London: Longmans, Accra: SPC, Manessy, G., Les Langues Oti/Volta, Paris: SELAF, 1975 Manessy, G., “Les Langues Voltaiques,” in Les Langues dans le Monde Ancien et Moderne, edited by Jean Perrot, Paris: CNRS, 1981 Naden, A., “Language, History, and Legend in Northern Ghana,” Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 9 (1988) Naden, A., “Gur,” in Niger-Congo, edited by Bendor-Samuel, Lanham, MD: Universities Press of America, 1989 Nikiema, E., Moore  : Languages of the World Materials No Munchen, Germany: Lincom Europa, forthcoming Swadesh et al. “A Preliminary Glottochronology of the Gur Languages,” Journal of West African Languages 3 (1966) Tuurey, G., Introduction to the Mole-speaking Community, Wa: Catholic Press, 1987

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