Essential elements of Songhai grammar

Type Thesis

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Summary

Guided by Principles and Parameters Theory this thesis provides a grammatical description of Songhai, a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in Mali, Niger, Benin, and Burkina Faso. The variety of the language considered is that spoken in Gao in northeastern Mali. Phonological, morphological, syntactic, and discourse structures are described. Areas of particular interest are phrase structure, word order typology, information question and relative clause formation, and verb auxiliaries. Phrase structure is considered in reference to the hypothesis of universal principles and language-specific parameters. Basic constituent order is SOV, but SVO is exhibited obligatorily for a certain category of verbs, for which an explanation is presented. Gap, resumptive pronoun, and pied-piping strategies are used with information questions and with relative clauses (where Songhai is possibly a counterexample to the Accessibility Hierarchy). The system of tense, aspect, and mode auxiliaries is considered in reference to phrase and discourse structures.