Typological Features Template for Southern Dagaare

Mark Ali, University of Education, Winneba

Feature	Description
Phonological Features	In the following fields you describe the phonological inventory o [your language]
Vowel inventory	a e i o u ɛ ɔ
Vowel harmony	Dagaare has advanced(/a/,/e/,/i/,/o/,/u/)and un-advanced (/a/,/υ/,/ι/,/ɔ/,/ɛ/) tongue root vowels.Only one group can occur within a simple word environment.e.g bie (child), tuo (bitter); pυɔ (stomach), tιε (tree).
Consonant inventory	b d f g gb gy h k kp ky l m n ŋ ŋm ny p r s t v w y z Some people mark additional consonantal sounds.
Tone The basic tone structures of Dagaare is L H and M. Although there appear to be a downstep no elaborate study has confirmed this.	Tone has both lexical and grammatical marking on words. eg:i.tú V(to dig)ii.tù V(to follow), iii. tù V(to narrate); i.má PARTC(well),ii.mà V(to stick) iii.mǎ N(mother)and i. báá N(dog) ii.bàà V(to grow).
Syllable Structure
Morpho-syntactic Features	In the following fields you describe some of the basic morpho-syntactic parameters of [your language]
morphological classification (1)	[Your language] could be an isolating language (not (or nearly not) making use of morphology, agglutinative, such as the Bantu languages of Africa, or synthetic, such as the Saami languages of Scandinavia, or even polysynthetic such as Greenlandic. In this field you classify [your language] according to these parameters if possible.
morphological classification (2)	head independant marking as in doolee, doo (man), lee (small) = boy
Nominal Phrases	In the following fields follows a description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of nominal constituents
syntactic structure	In this field you describe the linear order of elements in the noun phrase
nominal modification	In this field you indicate the basic types of nominal modification (adjectives, relative clauses, adpositions...)
nominal specification	In this field you indicate the basic types of specification. Does [your language] have determiners, demonstratives (deixis), numerals, quantifiers. Are there affixes expressing reference, deixis. Are there nouns or other elements expression a portion of a noun that the co-occur with?
possession	In this field you describe how possession is expressed (for example, syntactically or by use of prepositions, through juxtaposition or morphologically) Does [your language] feature possessive pronouns?
pronominal system	In this field you indicate if [your language] has free pronoun forms? Are pronouns marked for their grammatical function (object versus subject pronouns)? Does your language have bound pronouns (affixes) or pronoun doubling? Are reflexives expressed by pronouns?
Verbal Phrases	In the following fields serve for the description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of verbal constituents
word order	The following sentence illustrates the basic word order which is SVO
TAM	In this field you indicate which tense and/or aspects are morphologically or tonally marked; does [your language] make use of periphrastic tense or aspect constructions?
infinitival forms	In this field you indicate if [your language] makes use of an infinitive marker? How many infinitival forms does your language have?
verbal constructions	There are serial verb constructions in Dagaare. Iri gaa gaŋ. “Get up and go to sleep.” Iri iri get_up V gaa gaa go V2 gaŋ gaŋ sleep V3
Adpositions	In this field you indicate if [your language[ makes use of prepositions or postpositions. Does your language have spatial nouns? Does your language use adpositions or particles to indicate grammatical relations between the verb and a nominal argument?
Complementation	In this field you describe complementation strategies. Does [your language] make use of complementizers?
Special Properties of [your language]	In this field you should mention properties of [your language] which did not fit into any of the other categories mentioned in this template