The syntax of the Gonja noun phrase

Abstract

This study presents an analysis of the noun phrase in Gonja. It discussed the noun phrase structure and all the elements that occur before and after it. Three kinds of noun phrases were identified and discussed which include simple noun phrase, complex noun phrase, and other noun phrases which do not have overt nouns in them. The findings in this study show that the noun phrase structure of Gonja is made up of the compulsory noun head and other optional elements that occur before and after it. Gonja exhibits a clear case whereby the noun head of an NP is post modified by a series of adjectives appearing in their full forms and these adjectives give additional information about the noun they modify. Also, the genitive marker be is used to express possession however other elements like determiner, and demonstrative may occur before it. In addition, it is noted that the adjective and the verb can be nominalized leading to derivation from the classes of adjectives and verbs to noun class. The nominalized elements in Gonja have singular and plural markers as their initial segments. In relation to pronominal possession, there seem to be friction between the separation of the possessive from the pronoun as putting the pronoun and the possessive together is deceptive. This study concludes that modifiers of the NP in Gonja occur in a certain syntactic sequence which is relatively fixed. The data of this thesis was analyzed using the descriptive analysis approach.