Abstract:
This thesis discusses the concept of negation strategies in Gonja, a Guan language spoken
in the Savannah Region of Ghana. It focuses on how sentential, imperatives and
constituent negation is marked in Gonja. Negation in Gonja is marked via the use of
syntactic independent particles which come before the verb. The analysis is mainly
descriptive and is cast within the theoretical framework of the Basic Linguistic Theory
(BLT) by Dixon (2012). The study also examined the various preverbal particles used in
the language for marking negation. Data for this thesis were collected from both primary
and secondary sources. The primary data were drawn mainly from naturally occurring
spoken texts (spontaneous speech) which were recorded from a Gonja speaking
community in the East Gonja District dialect. The spontaneous data which were phone
recorded were formally and informally transcribed for the analysis. These were
supplemented by elicited data, as well as data based on my native speaker intuition. The
secondary data were collected from some Gonja books. The findings in this study
indicate that, Gonja employs one strategy for marking of negation. The overtly expressed
negative markers are maa, maŋ, maaŋ, saŋ and manɛ used for negating declaratives and
imperatives and constituent constructions respectively. The findings show that these
preverbal negative markers interact with aspectual markers in the language. The findings
further indicate that there is incompatibility between the progressive aspectual and future
markers in Gonja negation. I conclude that in Gonja, there is no overt morpheme that is
attached to the verb to mark the imperative mood.
Description:
A thesis in the Department of Gur-Gonja Education, Faculty of Ghanaian
Languages Education, submitted to the school of Graduate Studies, in partial
fulfilment
of requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Philosophy
(Gonja)
in the University of Education, Winneba