Gurene Language

Gurene, also known as Gurenne, Frafra, Farefare or Gurune, is the language of the Gurene people of northern Ghana, particularly the Upper East Region, and southern Burkina Faso. It is a national language of Ghana, and is closely related to Dagbani and other languages of Northern Ghana, and also related to Mossi, also known as Mooré, the national language of Burkina Faso.

Frafra consists of three principal dialects, GurenÉ› (also written ''GurunÉ›,'' ''Gudenne, Gurenne, Gudeni, Zuadeni''), Nankani (''Naane, Nankanse, Ninkare''), and Boone. Nabit and Talni have been mistakenly reported to be Frafra dialects.ISO change request
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Names

The general and accepted name for the language is Farefare or Frafra. The names Gurene, Gurenne and Gurune are unaccepted by native speakers.

Orthography

The Frafra language uses the letters of the Latin alphabet except for c, j, q, x, and with the addition of ɛ, ɩ, ŋ, ɔ, and ʋ. The tilde is used for showing nasalization in Burkina Faso, but in Ghana it is shown using the letter n. The two nasal vowels /ɛ̃/ and /ɔ̃/ are spelt with ẽ and õ respectively. All long nasal vowels only get their tilde written on the first letter.

Acute, grave, circumflex, caron, and macron are sometimes used in grammar books to indicate tone, but not in general-purpose texts. The apostrophe is used to indicate the glottal stop.

Phonology

Consonants

Frafra has a system of 17 phonemes, 19 counting the allophones /ɣ/ and /ɾ/.

The sound /Å‹/ appears in front of some words starting with /w/, leading them to change into the /j/ sound. /h/ only appears in loanwords, exclamations, and as an allophone of /f/. An example of both of these sound changes are ''weefo'' and ''yeho'' (both meaning ''"horse"''). The only consonants Frafra words may end in are the two nasals /m/ and /n/.

Glottal stop

Glottal stops appear at the initial vowel of a word, but are not transcribed. Word-medially, vowel nasalization continues over the glottal stop. In rapid speech, the glottal stop is usually dropped, similar to how vowel hiatus gets dropped in Spanish.

Word medial glottal stops must be marked in writing.

Allophones

= Allophones of /r/

=
and �are two phonetic realizations of the same phoneme. occurs at the beginning of words, and �is its counterpart everywhere else.

= Allophones of /g/

=
�is an allophone of /g/ that occurs after certain vowels. It is mostly written "g." Usage of the letter "ɣ" is quite rare.

= Allophones of /j/

=
�is an allophone of /j/ that occurs before a nasal vowel. It is always written as "y."

Sandhi

This section will describe all the morpho-phonological sandhi processes that affect Frafra.

= Nasals

=
Nasal consonants undergo assimilation, coalescence, and elision.

Assimilation at Point of Articulation

Nasals assimilate to the point of articulation of the occlusive the proceed.

* /m/ goes before /p/ and /b/
* /n/ goes before /t/ and /d/
* /Å‹/ goes before /k/

Coalescence

When a nasal is followed by /g/, the two consonants amalgamate.

* /n/ + /g/ = /Å‹/

This rule does not apply to compound words (e.g. ''tẽŋgãnnɛ "sacred land"'') or loanwards (e.g. ''maŋgo'' "mango")

Elision

Nasals disappear when they go before /f/

* /m/ + /f/ = /f/
* /n/ + /f/ = /f/

= Stops

=
Two voiced stops become their unvoiced foNorthernrm. Remember that �is the word-medial allophone of /d/

* /g/ + /g/ = /k/
* /r/ + /r/ = /t/

Sonorants

= Vibrant assimilation

=
Vibrant consonants, also called taps, assimilate to a preceding lateral or nasal.

* /l/ + /r/ = /ll/
* /n/ + /r/ = /nn/
* /m/ + /r/ = either /nn/ or /mn/

= Lateral assimilation

=

* /n/ + /l/ = /nn/
* /m/ + /l/ = /nn/

= Combination of these processes

=
C designates any consonant, and N designates any nasal.

* Cm + r = Cn
* Cl + r = Cl

Vowels

Frafra has 9 oral vowels and 5 nasal vowels.

All Frafra vowels have a long form.

Vowel harmony

Like many Mande languages, Frafra features vowel harmony. When suffixes are added to word roots, the vowel in the root selects whether the suffix will use the tense or lax form. The exception is suffixes ending in "-a" because /a/ is neutral in Frafra, meaning that it is only one form. Prefixes do not exist in Frafra.

= Where all vowels must be in harmony

=
In disyllabic words, both vowels are always in harmony. The same applies in vowel sequences.

= Mid vowels

=
The lax vowel -a in noun and verb endings will change the tense vowels /e/ and /o/ to lax vowels /É›/ and /É”/.

= Close vowels

=
When a suffix's vowel is close, and stem's vowel is close and tense, it causes the suffix's vowel to become tense.

For example, the locative postposition "-Ê‹m" becomes "-um" after the vowels /i/, /Ä©/, /u/, and /Å©/.

* pʋʋrɛ (''"belly"'') > pʋʋrʋm ("''inside the belly''")
* nifo ("eye") > nifum ("''inside the eye''")

However, tense vowels that are not close do not affect "ʋm". Therefore ''poore'' ("back") becomes ''poorʋm'' ("behind")''.''

The particle "nɩ," which goes after a verbs to mark the incomplete aspect, becomes "ni" after /i/, /ĩ/, /u/, and /ũ/.

Grammar

Tone

Guren​ɛ marks a high and a low tone. Changes in tone have an impact on either the lexical or grammatical function of a particular word.

Lexical Function

With low tones the word becomes a verb, whereas with high tones it is a noun.

Grammatical Function

The low tone on the preverbal tense marker ''wà'' indicates future, while the high tone on the same element indicates aspect.

Noun Classes

Nouns in GurunÉ› have different "classes" with regard to plurals:

Pronouns

Personal Pronouns

Emphatic Pronouns

Only emphatic pronouns can appear in focus positions, whereas all other pronouns cannot appear in those positions. Emphatic pronouns are used in exclusive contexts, in which the speaker indicates that only one thing is true and not the other.

Reciprocal Pronoun

The reciprocal pronoun is ''taaba'' and occurs postverbally.

Reflexive Pronouns

To form a reflexive pronoun in Gurenɛ the morphem ''-miŋa'' for singular or ''-misi'' for plural is attached to a particular personal pronoun. While in other Gur languages, the reflexive morphem is not sensitive to number, in Gurenɛ there exist two forms, one for each number.

Relative Pronouns

There are two relative pronouns, ''ti'' and ''n''. The former relativizes subjects, while the latter is used to relativize objects. Both pronouns are not sensitive to number or animacy, while this is the case in other Gur languages such as Dagbani for instance.

Interrogative Pronouns

Interrogative pronouns can either occur sentence-initially or sentence-finally.

Demonstrative Pronouns

Each demonstrative pronoun refers to a single noun class.

Syntax

Word Order

The word order in GurenÉ› is strictly SVO.

Verb Phrase

The verb phrase (VP) consists of pre- and postverbal particles surrounding the verb. Preverbal particles encode aspect, tense, negation, and mood, such as imperative and conditional. Postverbal particles also encode aspect and tense, but in addition to that they can also encode focus. The order of particles within the VP is strictly organized as shown below. Moreover, the maximal amount of pre- and postverbal particles is also strictly defined. There can be at maximum five preverbal and two postverbal particles within one clause in GurenÉ›.

Time > Tense > Conditional > Aspectual > Future > Negation > Emphatic > Epistemic > Purpose > Verb > Tense > Focus/Affirmative/Completive/Directional

Particles

There are a lot of particles in GurenÉ›, such that the total number is not fully clear. The following table provides an overview of the most common particles.

Verb

The verb in GurenÉ› consists of an obligatory stem or root, that can take one or more morphems. Verbs appear either in the perfective or imperfective form, depending on its aspect. The perfective expresses actions in the present, whereas the imperfective denotes actions in the past or progressive.

Question Formation

There are several ways of forming a question in GurenÉ›, but importantly the strict word order SVO is always to obey.

Ex situ

In subject questions the question word occurs as the first element of the clause and can either function as the subject or as the agent of the clause.

In situ

In general, questions are formed by raising intonation of the final tone. Questions without an explicit question word have a clause-final question marker ''-ì''.

Embedded

Questions can be embedded and are then preceded by the complementizer ''tí''.

Multiple Questions

Question can also be formed by more than one question word. In these cases one question word occurs ex situ and the other(s) in situ. Again, a question word can only appear ex situ, if it replaces the subject or agent of the clause.

Long distance extraction

Question words in GurenÉ› can also cross clause boundaries, such that they originated in the embedded clause and have been fronted to the clause-initial position.

Greetings

Geography

''Solemitẽŋa'' means "land of the white man" and is used to refer to all non-African countries.

''SoleminÉ›'' is theoretically referring to all non-African languages, however it is only used to refer to English.

Bibliography

*Atintono, Samuel (2011). ''Verb Morphology: Phrase structure in a Gur Language (Gurenɛ).'' Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing.
*Bodomo, Adams, Hasiyatu Abubakari & Samuel Alhassan Issah (2020). ''Handbook of the Mabia Languages of West Africa''. Glienicke: Galda Verlag
*Kropp-Dakubu,M.E., S. Awinkene Antintono, and E. Avea Nsoh, ''A Gurenɛ–English Dictionary and accompanying English–Gurenɛ Glossary''
*Kropp-Dakubu, M.E. (2009). ''Parlons farefari (gurenè): langue et culture de Bolgatanga (Ghana) et ses environs''. Paris: L`Harmattan
*
Ninkare Frafra Dictionary

Notes

External links

*
The VP-periphery in Mabia languages

References

{{Authority control

Languages of Ghana
Oti–Volta languages
Articles citing ISO change requests