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.
Description:
A thesis in the Department of Applied Linguistics,
Faculty of Foreign Languages Education and Communication,
submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfilment
of the requirement for the award of the degree of
Master of Philosophy
(Applied Linguistics)
in the University of Education, Winneba.