Kusaal language
Encyclopedia
Kusaal is a Gur language
spoken primarily in northern Ghana
. It is spoken by roughly 400,000 people and takes its name from the Kusasi people
, who form the majority of the population of the area in the far northeast of Ghana, between the Gambaga escarpment, the Red Volta, and the national borders with Togo and Burkina Faso. There are some villages of Kusaasi in Burkina and also a few speakers in Togo. Kusaal is closely related to Mampruli, the language of the Mamprussi, who live to the south, and to Dagbani. There is a major dialect division between Agole, to the east of the White Volta river, and Toende, to the West. Agole has more speakers, and the only large town of the district, Bawku
, is in Agole. The New Testament
translation is in the Agole dialect.
, the largest African language of Burkina Faso (and the largest of all Gur languages, with millions of speakers).
agreement system still found in e.g. the more distantly related Gurmanche, and has only a natural gender system, human/non-human. The noun classes are still distinguishable in the way nouns distinguish singular from plural by paired suffixes:
nid(a) "person" plural nidib(a)
buug(a) "goat" plural buus(e)
nobir(e) "leg, foot" plural noba(a)
fuug(o) "item of clothing" plural fuud(e)
molif(o) "gazelle" plural moli(i)
A unpaired suffix -m(m) is found with many uncountable and abstract nouns, e.g. ku'om(m) "water"
The bracketed final vowels in the examples occur because of the feature which most strikingly separates Kusaal from its close relatives: the underlying forms of words, such as buuga "goat" are found only when the word in question is the last word in a question or a negated statement. In all other contexts an underlying final short vowel is dropped and a final long vowel is shortened:
Fu daa nye buug la. "You saw the goat."
Fu daa nye buug. "You saw a goat."
Fu daa pu nye buuga. "You didn't see a goat."
Ano'one daa nye buuga? "Who saw a goat?"
bupielig(a) "white goat" [ bu-(g(a)) + piel- + -g(a) ]
bupielis(e) "white goats"
There are a few traces of the old system (as in Gurmanche) whereby the adjective took the singular/plural endings appropriate to the class of the preceding noun, but the system is completely unproductive in Kusaal now.
(a) no ending, used for perfective aspect: M gos buug la. "I've looked at the goat."
(b) -d(a) ending, for imperfective: M gosid buug la. "I look at the goat."
(c) -m(a) for positive imperative: Gosim buug la! "Look at the goat!"
(d) -in subjunctive for irrealis : Fu ya'a gosin ... "If you were to look (but you won't) ..."
(e) -b(o), -g(o), -r(e) gerund, verbal noun : o gosig la mor dabiem "his (the angel's) appearance was scary" [Judges 13:6 draft] - literally 'his seeing the had fear'
Some 10% of verbs, with stative meanings, have only a single form.
The verb is preceded by a chain of invariable particles expressing tense, polarity and mood. Serial verb constructions are common and important, as in many West African languages.
M boodi f. "I love you." traditionally written M bood if.
M boodu. "I love him/her." traditionally written M bood o.
Within the noun phrase, except for the typical noun-adjective Gur compounding, the rule is that associative modifier (possessive, genitive) precedes the head:
m buug "my goat"
buug la nobir "the goat's foot" (la "the", follows its noun)
Numeral and deictics (demonstrative, article) follow, with the quantitative in final place:
m buus atan' la wusa "all my three goats"
s (except between adjacent words) occur only word-internally at morpheme-junctures, and are determined by the limited range of consonants which can appear in syllable-final position. Clusters arising from the addition of suffixes in derivation and flexion are either simplified or broken up by inserted ("svarabhakti") vowels.
The roster of consonants includes the widespread West African labiovelar
double-closure stops kp, gb, but the palatal series of the related languages (written ch/j in Dagbani and Hanga and ky/gy in Mampruli) fall in with the simple velars, as in neighbouring Farefare (Frafra, Gurene) and Moore. The reflexes of the palatal and labiovelar double-closure nasals of the related languages, [n] written ny and [ŋm] ŋm - are probably best analysed as a nasalised y and w respectively, but the scope of the nasalisation and the order of its onset with respect to the semivowel is variable.
The vowel system is not yet fully understood, complicated by differences between the Agole and Toende dialects and the system of diphthong
s in Agole, which according to the most-favoured analysis, enables Agole with seven contrastive vowel segments to cover the contrasts represented in Toende with nine pure vowels. There are also lengthened or strengthened vowels 'broken' with a glottal stop
[V₁-ʔ-V₂] bu'ud "beating" distinct from the glottal as a consonant, usually in [V₁-ʔ-V₂] ku'om "water". Glottal also marks some monosyllabic verbs bu' "beat". In addition some vowels are contrastively nasalised
and others nasalised through the influence of nasal consonant
s. In the orthography a letter n followed by a vowel or glottal indicates that the preceding vowel is contrastively nasalised, unless in word-final position when nasalisation is indicated by a double nn and a single n is a final consonant.
The language ha been analysed by some scholars as tonal, with tonal differences distinguishing lexical items (with few minimal pairs) and syntactic constructions. The intrinsic tones of individual words are often overridden with a different pattern in particular syntactic constructions, e.g. main verbs in positive main clauses become all-low-tone.
Many words also cause tone changes in closely connected following or preceding words by "tone spreading".
The tonal system is a terracing
system with two tones and emic downsteps, but with the H! sequence being realized as extra-high in some contexts. The domain of tone is the vowel mora
, but there are many constraints on the possible tone patterns with a word; uncompounded nouns show only 4 different overall possibilities at most for any given segmental shape, and inflecting verbs have only two possible intrinsic tone patterns.
It is adequate for mother-tongue speakers but does not suffice to distinguish the seven distinct vowel qualities of Agole Kusaal, does not mark tone, and has partly inconsistent word-division conventions due to the complications produced by the Kusaal final vowel loss/reduction phenomena.
There is currently (March 2008) a committee working on a revision of the orthography and spelling system.
Gur languages
The Gur languages, also known as Central Gur, belong to the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 70 languages belonging to this group. They are spoken in Burkina Faso, southern Mali, northeastern Côte d'Ivoire, northern Ghana, northern Togo, northwestern Benin, and southwestern Niger.Like most...
spoken primarily in northern Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
. It is spoken by roughly 400,000 people and takes its name from the Kusasi people
Kusasi people
The Kusasi people are an ethnic group in northern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso. They speak the Kusaal language, a Gur language...
, who form the majority of the population of the area in the far northeast of Ghana, between the Gambaga escarpment, the Red Volta, and the national borders with Togo and Burkina Faso. There are some villages of Kusaasi in Burkina and also a few speakers in Togo. Kusaal is closely related to Mampruli, the language of the Mamprussi, who live to the south, and to Dagbani. There is a major dialect division between Agole, to the east of the White Volta river, and Toende, to the West. Agole has more speakers, and the only large town of the district, Bawku
Bawku
Bawku is a town in Ghana. It is the capital of the Bawku Municipal District. As of 2005, the town's population is estimated at 71,982 making it the fifteenth largest city in Ghana.-References:...
, is in Agole. The New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
translation is in the Agole dialect.
Grammar
The language is a fairly typical representative of the Western Oti–Volta low-level grouping within Gur, which includes several of the more widely spoken languages of Northern Ghana, and also MooreMore language
The Mossi language, Mòoré is one of two official regional languages of Burkina Faso, closely related and mutually intelligible with the Dagbani language spoken in northern Ghana...
, the largest African language of Burkina Faso (and the largest of all Gur languages, with millions of speakers).
Nouns
Like most other Western Oti–Volta languages, it has lost the complicated noun classNoun class
In linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional...
agreement system still found in e.g. the more distantly related Gurmanche, and has only a natural gender system, human/non-human. The noun classes are still distinguishable in the way nouns distinguish singular from plural by paired suffixes:
nid(a) "person" plural nidib(a)
buug(a) "goat" plural buus(e)
nobir(e) "leg, foot" plural noba(a)
fuug(o) "item of clothing" plural fuud(e)
molif(o) "gazelle" plural moli(i)
A unpaired suffix -m(m) is found with many uncountable and abstract nouns, e.g. ku'om(m) "water"
The bracketed final vowels in the examples occur because of the feature which most strikingly separates Kusaal from its close relatives: the underlying forms of words, such as buuga "goat" are found only when the word in question is the last word in a question or a negated statement. In all other contexts an underlying final short vowel is dropped and a final long vowel is shortened:
Fu daa nye buug la. "You saw the goat."
Fu daa nye buug. "You saw a goat."
Fu daa pu nye buuga. "You didn't see a goat."
Ano'one daa nye buuga? "Who saw a goat?"
Adjectives
Kusaal shows the typical Gur feature whereby the noun and adjective stems are compounded in that order, followed by the singular/plural endings:bupielig(a) "white goat" [ bu-(g(a)) + piel- + -g(a) ]
bupielis(e) "white goats"
There are a few traces of the old system (as in Gurmanche) whereby the adjective took the singular/plural endings appropriate to the class of the preceding noun, but the system is completely unproductive in Kusaal now.
Verbs
Verbal flexion is agreeably simple, as in other Western Oti–Volta languages and unlike less closely related Gur languages. Most verbs have five flexional forms(a) no ending, used for perfective aspect: M gos buug la. "I've looked at the goat."
(b) -d(a) ending, for imperfective: M gosid buug la. "I look at the goat."
(c) -m(a) for positive imperative: Gosim buug la! "Look at the goat!"
(d) -in subjunctive for irrealis : Fu ya'a gosin ... "If you were to look (but you won't) ..."
(e) -b(o), -g(o), -r(e) gerund, verbal noun : o gosig la mor dabiem "his (the angel's) appearance was scary" [Judges 13:6 draft] - literally 'his seeing the had fear'
Some 10% of verbs, with stative meanings, have only a single form.
The verb is preceded by a chain of invariable particles expressing tense, polarity and mood. Serial verb constructions are common and important, as in many West African languages.
Pronouns
Object pronouns can be severely reduced in form by the Kusaal final-vowel-loss rules, surfacing as single consonants, or even zero; they are preceded by a reduced vowel ending the previous word, which is a reduced form of that word's own underlying final vowel, preserved before the enclitic pronoun:M boodi f. "I love you." traditionally written M bood if.
M boodu. "I love him/her." traditionally written M bood o.
Syntax
Word order is strictly SVO, but clefting is common.Within the noun phrase, except for the typical noun-adjective Gur compounding, the rule is that associative modifier (possessive, genitive) precedes the head:
m buug "my goat"
buug la nobir "the goat's foot" (la "the", follows its noun)
Numeral and deictics (demonstrative, article) follow, with the quantitative in final place:
m buus atan' la wusa "all my three goats"
Phonology
The sound system of Kusaal is similar to that of its relatives; consonant clusterConsonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s (except between adjacent words) occur only word-internally at morpheme-junctures, and are determined by the limited range of consonants which can appear in syllable-final position. Clusters arising from the addition of suffixes in derivation and flexion are either simplified or broken up by inserted ("svarabhakti") vowels.
The roster of consonants includes the widespread West African labiovelar
Labial-velar consonant
Labial–velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the lips. They are sometimes called "labiovelar consonants", a term that can also refer to labialized velars, such as and the approximant ....
double-closure stops kp, gb, but the palatal series of the related languages (written ch/j in Dagbani and Hanga and ky/gy in Mampruli) fall in with the simple velars, as in neighbouring Farefare (Frafra, Gurene) and Moore. The reflexes of the palatal and labiovelar double-closure nasals of the related languages, [n] written ny and [ŋm] ŋm - are probably best analysed as a nasalised y and w respectively, but the scope of the nasalisation and the order of its onset with respect to the semivowel is variable.
The vowel system is not yet fully understood, complicated by differences between the Agole and Toende dialects and the system of diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s in Agole, which according to the most-favoured analysis, enables Agole with seven contrastive vowel segments to cover the contrasts represented in Toende with nine pure vowels. There are also lengthened or strengthened vowels 'broken' with a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
[V₁-ʔ-V₂] bu'ud "beating" distinct from the glottal as a consonant, usually in [V₁-ʔ-V₂] ku'om "water". Glottal also marks some monosyllabic verbs bu' "beat". In addition some vowels are contrastively nasalised
Nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth...
and others nasalised through the influence of nasal consonant
Nasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
s. In the orthography a letter n followed by a vowel or glottal indicates that the preceding vowel is contrastively nasalised, unless in word-final position when nasalisation is indicated by a double nn and a single n is a final consonant.
The language ha been analysed by some scholars as tonal, with tonal differences distinguishing lexical items (with few minimal pairs) and syntactic constructions. The intrinsic tones of individual words are often overridden with a different pattern in particular syntactic constructions, e.g. main verbs in positive main clauses become all-low-tone.
Many words also cause tone changes in closely connected following or preceding words by "tone spreading".
The tonal system is a terracing
Tone terracing
Tone terracing is a type of phonetic downdrift, where the high or mid tones, but not the low tone, shift downward in pitch after certain other tones...
system with two tones and emic downsteps, but with the H! sequence being realized as extra-high in some contexts. The domain of tone is the vowel mora
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
, but there are many constraints on the possible tone patterns with a word; uncompounded nouns show only 4 different overall possibilities at most for any given segmental shape, and inflecting verbs have only two possible intrinsic tone patterns.
Orthography
The orthography used above is basically that of the New Testament translation, which remains the only substantial written work available in Kusaal. The New Testament orthography, however, spells "goat" boog, and the vowel is intermediate between u and o, phonetic [ʊ].It is adequate for mother-tongue speakers but does not suffice to distinguish the seven distinct vowel qualities of Agole Kusaal, does not mark tone, and has partly inconsistent word-division conventions due to the complications produced by the Kusaal final vowel loss/reduction phenomena.
There is currently (March 2008) a committee working on a revision of the orthography and spelling system.