----------------------------------------------------------------- Comments: Hausa's pronouns are the only NPs which reflect a case system. There are eight sets of pronouns, varying by their use in the sentence. I'm going to concentrate on the independent (subject), direct object and indirect object pronouns, and ignore the free possessive (i.e. mine, theirs), bound genitive (i.e. his, her, their), reflexive (i.e. yourself, myself) and reciprocal (i.e. ourselves) forms. Is that enough to work with this quarter, or should I try to Yes --- that's plenty :-) Independent pronouns are used with the stabilizer (cee/nee) in nonverbal sentences and as the focus in verbal sentences. It is also used for direct object when the it doesn't follow the verb (when an indirect object separates it from the verb). It appears in a subject position when conjoined with another NP ('we and they', 'I and the girl') or modified by some determiner or relative clause ('the her I was talking about'). So how are pronominal subjects expressed in cases where the independent pronouns are not available? Through verbal agreement markers? Source: {a:478} Vetted: s Judgement: g Phenomena: {Case} mun kar.àncee su mun kar.àncee su 1s.COMP read-all 3pl.dobj 'we read them (all)' There's something wrong here: either mun should be glossed as 1p, or we should be I. Pronouns in Hausa are classified by number, person and gender (only in 2nd and 3rd person singular), while nouns and noun phrases are only classified as either masculine, feminine or plural. The PAC (which I have chosen to interpret as an affix to the verb) must agree with the person/number/gender of the subject of the sentence. Demonstratives, adjectives and the definiteness suffix (equivalent to 'the') agree with the gender and number of the noun they modify. To generalize a bit, it sounds like Hausa has a number distinction in all three persons, but only has a gender distinction among nouns/pronouns that are singular and either 2nd or 3rd person. In addition, is it the case that the number and gender are expressed through portmanteau morphs, so that you can't point to a morpheme that means "singular" and another that means "feminine"? Questions show the same word order as declarative sentences. Main clause yes-no questions may be marked by intonation, the lengthening of the last vowel in the sentence (optionally adding low tone to the last syllable) or the adding of a sentence-initial or sentence-final question word. The word 'koo' (or) may be either a sentence-initial or a sentence-final question marker. Are the vowel lengthening and/or tone change marked in the orthography? Are they compatible with the question marker, in either position? I don't really understand how the reference grammar is describing the complement of the aspectual verb. It says that the complement VP must have the 'same subject interpretation'. But verbs by themselves (without PAC) aren't inflected for subject agreement. Does this sound like it's describing subject raising? The whole sentence only has one PAC, so there is only one subject marked for the AV and all its complements. Yes! It sounds like the PAC goes only with the finite verb, and the modal takes a non-finite VP complement. But, the subject must be interpreted as the subject of both verbs. The conjuntion 'dà' ('and'), is used to join NPs or post-nominal adjectives, but not sentences. It may optionally appear in front of the first item, as well as between all the joined items. Joining sentences is done by placing them next to one another. In this way, 'we ate and drank', becomes 'mun ci mun sha' or 'we ate we drank'. Is this a phenomenon that can be covered in the grammar matrix? I'm thinking I might ignore this form of coordination. Yes, we can handle it. It's called asyndeton :-) You'll need to find information about clausal-complement verbs eventually, since we will have a lab on it.