Super-redundancy in Gwandara

                                                MATSUSHITA, Shuji

                                                

0.  The Gwandara is a "bastardized" Hausa, a creolized form of Hausa spoken 
in the Nigerian Middle Belt, away south from the Hausa heartland.  Some 
written and oral traditions tell that Hausa-Gwandara separation occured around 
600 years ago in a few successive waves.
 
 
1.  Hausa developed a peculiar grade system for the verbs to denote verbal aspect 
and mood.  These grades are marked with their distinct suffix and tonal pattern.

        naa kaamàà              'I caught'                      (Grade 1)
        naa kaamè               'I caught firmly'               (Grade 3)
        naa kaamoo              'I caught and came here'        (Grade 6)
        naa kààmu               'I was caught firmly'           (Grace 7)

   Gwandara verbs, generally, lost this original grade system 1), and keep an 
unchanged form in any contexts.  The burden of expressing aspects and moods 
were thereby transfered to circumlocutions, prepositional phrases and 
additional verbs.  Some of the modus operandi are illustrated in the following paragraphs.
   
   
2.  Due to tha lack of Grade system, Gwandara verbs do not keep a formal 
dichotomy of certain verbs of transactions like 'lend/borrow' or 'teach/learn'.
Semantic differentiation is realized by a syntactic structure.
    
    n´     pata                         'I lent/I borrowed'
    I-past lend/borrow
    
    n´     patá-ke      'I borrowed your service/I lent you (something)'
    I-past L/B-you  
    
    n´     patá-ke riga                 'I lent you a gown'
    I-past L/B-you gown
    
    n´     pata riga àn´nyá-ì           'I borrowd a gown from him'

    I-past L/B  gown from-place-his

    n´     patá-ke riga àn´nyá-ì        'I borrowd a gown for you from him'
    I-past L/B-you gown place-his


    n´     kòkwe gwàndara               'I learned Gwandara'
    I-past T/L   G.
    
    n´     kòkwé-i gwàndara             'I taught him Gwandara'
    I-past T/L-him G.
    
    n´     kòkwe gwàndara àn´nyá-ì      'I learned Gwandara from him'
    I-past T/L   G.       place-his
    
    
    rémèce 		                'to lend/borrow (money, food, etc.)'
    
    n´     rémèce kudi                  'I borrowd money/I lent money'
    I-past L/B    money
    
    n´     rémècé-i                     'I lent him (something)'
    I-past L/B-him
 
    n´     rémècé-i kudi                'I lent him money'
    I-past L/B-him  money
    
    n´     rémèce kudi  àn´nyá-ì	'I borrowed money from him'
    I-past L/B    money place-his
    
    In the case of rémèce, the semantic ambiguity might cause a serious 
trouble.  Therefore, aditional verbs can be attached to clarify the 
debtor-creditor relation without any misunderstanding.  At the same time, the verb 
rémèce has been transformed into a noun form with its tone pattern altered.
    
    n´     kèrèba  rèmècé'               'I borrowed (something)'
    I-past receive loan
    
    n´     bá-i     rèmècé'              'I lent (something)'
    I-past give     loan  
  
3.  Hausa describes a concept of commercial transaction by a root say-, 
differentiating into sàyaa (Grade II, 'to buy') and sayar (Grade V, 'to sell').
However, the Gwandara introduced  a new structure by adding a verb rà' 'to take'
to the base verb of transaction shè'.

   shè'         'to buy'
   rà shè'      'to sell'
   
   n´     rà   shè'                  'I sold'
   I-past take buy
   
   n´     rà   shè n`    shi         'I sold to him'
   I-past take buy with him

  This 'to sell' form is riddled with a large number of free variations (fv).  
Obviously, the formation of the structure occurred rather recently and has 
not yet been stabilized enough.
     
   n´     rà   kyèkye  shè'	       'I sold a bicycle'
   I-past take bicycle buy
   
   n´     rà   kyèkye  rà   shè'	'I sold a bicycle' (fv)
   I-past take bicycle take buy
   
   n´     rà   kyèkye  shè n`   shi	'I sold a bicycle to him'
   I-past take bicycle buy with him 


   n´     rà   kyèkye  rà  shè  n`   shi 'I sold a bicycle to him' (fv)
   I-past take bicycle take buy with him
   
   rà´-i   shè n`   ni			'sell it to me!'
   take-it buy with me
   
   rà´-i   rà   shè n`   ni		'sell it to me!' (fv)
   take-it take buy with me

  The general tendency goes to amalgamate two verbs rà' and shè' into one 
compound verb rà shè'.  However, when a direct object is explicitly expressed, 
it is necessary either to separate the compound verb or to introduce an extra
rà' into the structure.  That is why a redundunt ra is repeated frequently.
If there is no object, this redunduncy never occurs.

   *n´     rà   rà   shè'               *'I sold'
    I-past take take buy


4.  Next redunduncy case occurs with a prepositional composition.  Hausa uses 
Grade 6 (action moving hither) for the concept 'to bring' kaawoo.  
  However, a circumlocution

   naa    zoo  dà   shii                'I came with it/I brought it'
   I-past come with it

is perfectly natural and grammatical.  This very form has been transfered 
into Gwandara as a sole carrier of the concept.

   n´     jó-n`-shi                     'I brought/I brought it'                    
   I-past come-with-it
   
  This jó-n`-shi form can either appear as a full fledged verb or be 
dissected into original components and the final pronominal part replaced 
by a direct object (d.o.).  Obviously, the original etymology is still vivid 
for the Gwandara speakers.

   kí       jó-n`-shi               'you brought/you brought it (d.o.)' 
   you-past bring(it)
   
   kí       jó-n`-shu               'you brought them (d.o.)'
   you-past bring-them
   
   kí       jó-n`   kyèkye          'you brought a bike'
   you-past bring   bicycle

   However, this jó-n`-shi form shows a bizarre semantic redundancy when 
followed by a direct pronominal object (d.o.) or an indirect pronominal 
object (i.o.).  In these cases, the etymoligical origin of -shi has been 
completely ignored.
   Furtheremore, prepositinal marker introducing a direct object can be 
repeated again, side by side with the original -n- preposition of jó-n`-shi.

   kí       jó-n`-shí i			'you brought him (d.o.)'
   you-past bring     him
   
   kí       jó-n`-shí ni n`   kyèkye	'you brought me a bike'
   you-past bring     me with bicycle
   
   n´     jó-n`-shí ke			'I brought you (d.o.)
   I-past bring     you
   
   n´     jó-n`-shí ke  n`    shu	'I brought you (i.o.) them'
   I-past bring     you with  them
   
    A mirror-image case occurs with a verb tè-n`-shi 'to carry away', 
etymologically, 'go-with-it'.
      
   kí       tè n`   kyèkye              'you carried away a bicycle'
   you-past go with bicycle
   
   kí       tè-n`-shí  ni n`   kyèkye   'you carried away my bicycle'
   you-past carry-away me with bicycle

5.  Conclusion:
    Failure of transfering one gramatical feature, Hausa Grade system, leads 
into a series of ambiguities in Gwandara.  To solve these troubles, Gwandara 
had to resort to overt and repetitious expression of nominal phrase.
    Morphological components of verbs like jó-n`-shi 'bring', tè-n`-shi 'carry 
away', rà shè' 'sell' are perfectly analyzable.  But for the benefit of 
establishing a cleacut donor-donee relation, etymology of these components 
are being ignored.




Notes

1)  Some sporadic Grade verbs have been introduced into Gwandara as an 
individual lexeme.
	kàmu    'to be caught'          Hausa Grade 7
	jó      'to come'               Hause Grade 6
These verbs do not represent a part of the Grade system, though.