Some aspects of nominalization in Dagbani

Abstract

The primary aim of this thesis was to investigate some aspects of nominalization as it operates in Dagbani, a Gur language widely spoken in the Northern region of Ghana. The Basic Linguistic Theory (BLT) (cf. Dixon, 2009, 2010 & 2012) and Autosegmental phonology (Goldsmith, 1976) were adopted for this study. The study explores the types, morphological as well as the phonological processes of nominalization in Dagbani. It further examines the syntactic properties that the derived nominal shares with a prototypical Dagbani noun or noun phrase. Nominalization is the process of deriving nominals from a combination of other lexical categories or phrasal entities (Adeniyi, 2010, p.5). Languages of the world adopt one or more strategies for deriving nominals from verbs, adjectives or other nouns (Comrie & Thompson, 2007, p.335). It is revealed in the study that Dagbani employs one mechanism (morphological) in deriving nouns from other word classes. This mechanism or strategy involves affixation, compounding and reduplication. The study also revealed that just like other languages in Ghana, the derived nominals in Dagbani also possess some syntactic properties of a prototypical noun. For instance, it can function as a subject, occur in the object position and can be focused in a clause. It further explores some phonological issues in the study as far as nominalization in Dagbani is concerned. The study applied semi structured interview, observation, focus group discussion and native speaker’s intuition using a qualitative approach. The participants used for the study were purposively selected from both educated and uneducated native speakers of Dagbani. The study was to answer research questions about the types and processes of nominalization. The types identified in the study are ones denoting Action, Actor (agentive), Location, Abstract (ive), Manner, Result and Experiencer. Phonological processes such as vowel harmony, homorganic nasal assimilation, epenthesis and elision were examined. Finally, in relation to Agent nominalization, the study revealed that, the suffixes, -da and -ra are also used for Patient and Experiencer nominalizations.