Typological Features Template for Southern Dagaare

Mark Ali, University of Education, Winneba

John Ganaah

Feature	Description
Phonological Features
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), bàá N(pond/stream).
Syllable Structure Dagaare has the following syllable structures: CV; CVV,CVVV,CVC, CVCV, VC, VVCV
Morpho-syntactic Features
morphological classification (1)
morphological classification (2)	head independant marking as in doolee, doo (man), lee (small) = boy
Nominal Phrases
syntactic structure
nominal modification
nominal specification
possession
pronominal system
Verbal Phrases
word order	The following sentence illustrates the basic word order which is SVO
TAM
infinitival forms
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
Complementation
Special Properties of Soutern Daagare