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A Grammar of Seenku
-
Laura McPherson
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2020
About this book
Seenku is a Western Mande language of the Samogo group spoken in southwestern Burkina Faso by approximately 17,000 speakers. It has undergone a lot of phonological reduction, leading to a rich segmental and tonal phoneme inventory but mainly mono- and sesquisyllabic roots. The language has four contrastive levels of tone that combine to create over a dozen contours. Tone has a high functional load lexically and grammatically, permeating all aspects of grammar. Most verbs have two stem forms: a realis form and an irrealis form. The realis is derived from the irrealis by infixing a high vowel before the stem vowel, creating a diphthong. The use of a particular stem form is determined by aspect and construction type, but most other morphosyntactic meanings (e.g. progressive aspect or causative) are expressed analytically. Like most Mande languages, Seenku has an S Aux O V X word order in addition to areal clause-final negation. It displays a reduced set of post-subject “predicate markers” compared to other Mande languages, and those that are attested are variably realized only by tone changes and lengthening on the subject itself.
Author / Editor information
Laura McPherson, Dartmouth College, Hanover, United States.
Topics
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Frontmatter
I -
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Acknowledgements
VII -
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Contents
IX -
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Abbreviations
XIX -
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1 Introduction
1 -
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2 Sketch of the grammar
11 -
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3 Segmental phonology
20 -
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4 Tone
77 -
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5 Nominal morphology
128 -
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6 Pronouns and anaphora
144 -
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7 Compound nouns
159 -
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8 Noun phrase structure
177 -
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9 Ideophones and onomatopoeia
231 -
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10 Postpositions and adverbials
249 -
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11 Coordination
295 -
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12 Verb stems and verbal derivation
307 -
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13 Verbal inflection
335 -
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14 Non-verbal predicates
371 -
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15 Comparatives
385 -
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16 Interrogation
393 -
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17 Relative clauses
407 -
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18 Conditional constructions
426 -
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19 Complement and purposive clauses
441 -
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20 Clause coordination and event sequencing
476 -
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21 Information structure and discourse
491 -
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22 Artistic adaptation of language
518 -
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23 Texts
528 -
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Bibliography
565 -
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Index
571
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
March 9, 2020
eBook ISBN:
9783110765021
Hardcover published on:
March 9, 2020
Hardcover ISBN:
9783110612950
Paperback published on:
January 31, 2022
Paperback ISBN:
9783110777109
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Front matter:
20
Main content:
572
Illustrations:
16
Coloured Illustrations:
7
Tables:
62
eBook ISBN:
9783110765021
Hardcover ISBN:
9783110612950
Paperback ISBN:
9783110777109
Audience(s) for this book
Linguists, Typologists, Phonologists, Syntactitians, Ethnomusicologists
Safety & product resources
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Manufacturer information:
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Genthiner Straße 13
10785 Berlin
productsafety@degruyterbrill.com
