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Dagaare is a Mabia language of the Gur branch of the Niger-Congo language family
of Africa. It is mainly spoken in northern Ghana by about 2 million people. This
grammatical sketch, based on the Central dialect spoken around Jirapa, is divided into
three chapters of phonology, morphology, and syntax. Chapter one provides
the basic phonological features of the language, including vowel harmony and tone. Chapter
two deals with the basic morphology of nouns and verbs. Chapter three
focuses on basic syntactic structures. Some canonical sentence types and various syntactic
alternations are outlined. These chapters are preceded by a summary of pertinent
sociolinguistic features of the language. A concluding section summarizes the current research status of Dagaare linguistics, points to major research areas to pursue, discusses how Dagaare relates to, and is in contact with, other languages, and outlines efforts to promote the language. Two appendices containing a text with interlinear translations and a short English - Dagaare wordlist complete this grammatical sketch. |