CHAPTER ONE
1.0 Introduction
This study focuses on negation in Atsam language spoken in Kauru local government Area of Kaduna state. The language of study Atsam is a language spoken by the Atsam people of southern Kaduna. The Atsam people call their language Chawai, which is commonly used by them.
As an introductory chapter, we shall focus firstly on the historical background of Atsam, geographical location of Atsam, socio-cultural background of Atsan speakers, Religion, festival, ceremonies and the Genetic classification of Atsam (chawai) language. We shall later proceed to scope and organization of the study, theoretical Framework, data analysis and later basic syntactic concepts.
We shall finally consider “NEGATON” in Chawai Language and application of transformational rules to Chawai negation.
1.1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF ATSAM PEOPLE
Atsam speakers were believed to have come from the southern part of Kaduna state with its L.G.A. headquarters in Kauru.
The inhabitants of the Chiefdom i.e. Chawai Cheifdom are mostly Atsam (the Chawai people) even though there are few non – Chawai that reside in the Chiefdom. The people of Chawai are known to be hospitable, helpful, industrious and peace loving, when one knocks on the door of a Chawai person at any hour of the day, one is assured of a warm – welcome. This is why they are usually regarded as the most peace loving people in Kaduna State.
The Chief as popularly known as Res-Tsam is the overall ruler in the land. The promulgation of laws that ensures peaceful co-existence and the maintenance of law and order within the chiefdom rest on his shoulders. He also performs the function of lobbing government in bringing developmental programmes to the Chiefdom. The Chief’s palace is located at Dama-Kasuwa Chawai being the headquarters for central administration.
The chiefdom is relatively new in terms of existence. There are only six districts. These districts include: Damakasuwa, with its head at Damakasuwa Chawai. This distrct covers villages as Kichiguya, Rafingora, Mangul, Kisari amongst others. The second district is Zambina with its head at Kingwan Makama Chawai. It covers villages as Badurum, Kurmi-Risga, Ungwan Rana among others. The third district is Fadan Chawai with its head at Fadan Chawai. This district covers villages as Kibobi, Talo, Riban and among other villages. The fouth district is Pari with its head at Kiffin Chawai. The district covers villages as Kiffin Chawai, Pari, among others. The fifth district is Kamaru district with its head at Kizakoro. The district has the following villages Kamaru, Kihoba, Kizakoro, Kizachi, Kuyan Bana among others. The sixth district is Bakin Kogi.
The respective Districts Heads are charged with the duty of ensuring peaceful co-existence and the maintenance of law and order within their domains. They however report directly to the Res-Tsam (the Chief of Chawai). The Districts heads are supported by a number of village Heads within their domains. The village Heads also report to the district Heads.
1.2 Socio-cultural profile/background of Atsam
1.2.1 Occupation
The people of Chawai are predominantly farmers, though there are few who are engaged in other income generating ventures. 80% of the population are farmers and depend on farming as their means of livelihood.
Some of the people in the area engage in crafts making as a source of income. Popular craft materials include baskets, wooden handle of simple farm tools such as hoes, cutlass, shovels, spades, etc.
A certain groups of people in the area are involved in bee keeping for the production of honey. This venture helps them to generate more income.
Fishing is another source of income they engage in. This practice does not only help in generating income to the people but also help in providing a source of proteins for them.
Petty trading is also another way by which people earn money. Though most of the petty trading is done by women, the men nowadays have joined their female counterparts.
1.2.2 Religion
Religion is a vital aspect in the life of a people and a nation as a whole. It is in this light that the Chawai people consider religion of great significance in their lives. There are two major religions in the chiefdom namely: Christianity and Islam. There is however a third religion which is gradually dying out due to increased awareness on the two main religions. The third religion is the traditional religion popularly known as “Dodo” in the area.
1.2.3 Festivals
In the north of Kaduna State, the Hausas and some immigrants from the southern states practice Islam and majority of the people in the southern LGAs profess Christianity. The major Muslim festivals are the “Salah” celebration of “”Idelfitri” and “IdElKabir”, while Christmas, New year and Easter are observed by the Christians. Two traditional festivals of significance are the “TukHam” and “Afan” in the area.
1.2.4 Marriage and Burial Rites
The Chawai people do some incantations before their marriage. They will select a woman to go round the village to tell them that a marriage is about to commence. The woman that is about to be married will not be allowed to sleep in the house for two days because they first of all must settle the marriage with the ResTsam (chief) and the village heads. After settling with them, they will commence the marriage process and dance round. The husband must not sleep with the woman for two days.
Marriage is the relationship between two people who are married. During the preparation towards wedding ceremony, the groom pays the bride’s price and dowry and brings with him some other materials like a goat, clothing materials, tuber of yams before he can get married to her.
The Atsam people believe that nobody must touch the dead person. They will cover the dead body with some leaves and tie him with leather called “fertilizer”. After that, they will make some incantations and carry the person and go round his room three times. After the burial, the people will dance and sing “gbari” which means “comfort”.
1.2.5 Food
The food eaten by the Atsam is finger millet popularly known as tamba. It is worth-knowing that this crop is still cultivated in virtually every Chawai farmland. it is the third most expensive cereal after acha and rice.
1.3 Genetic Classification
The essence of a genetic classification of a language is to trace the origin of the language and show its relationship with other languages. Atsam language belongs to the Benue-Congo group, which is a sub-family of Niger Kordofonian. This is shown by the family tree below.
African language
Afro-asiatic Niger-Kordofonian Nilo Sahara Khoisan
Niger – Congo Kordofonian
Kru Gur Adamawa West Atlantic Benue Congo
Platoid Bantoid
Fantsuam Gorg Atsam Koro Tyap Jjuu
(Blench 1992:94)
Fig. 1: Tree diagram, showing the genetic classification of Atsam language.
1.4 Scope and organization of the study
The main objective of this project is to study in detail the types of negation strategies that exist in Chawai language. Negation in Atsam will be on sentence negation, auxiliary negation, imperative negation and interrogative negation. We shall also study negation in respect to transformational processes which involve modification of constituents.
This long essay is divided into five chapters: the first chapter is the introductory chapter which will contain the general introduction of the research work, the historical background of the Atsam people, socio-cultural profile of the speakers, genetic classification, collection and analysis of data and the theoretical framework employed.
Chapter two presents a phonological overview of Atsam language and the basic syntactic concepts like phrase structure rules, basic word order, lexical categories and sentence types. Chapter three is on negation in Chawai language, while chapter four introduces us to transformational processes like focus construction, reflexivization and relativization. Chapter 5 summaries and concludes the work.
1.5 Theoretical framework
The theoretical framework to be employed in this research work is Government and Binding (GB) theory. GB theory is a model of grammar propounded and developed by Noam Chomsky. This is done with the aim of covering universal grammar (UG) that is the system or principles, conditions and rules that are elements or properties of all human languages.
In essence, negation as an aspect of syntax will be analysed under the GB theoretical framework.
1.6 Data Analysis
According to the data of this study collected from the field, there are different types of sentences such as simple sentence, compound sentence and complex sentence. There are four examples of simple sentence, four of compound sentence and three of complex sentence. There are also four examples of declarative sentence, four of imperative sentence, four of interrogative sentence and three of exclamatory sentence. There are Phrase structure rules which consists of four noun phrases, four verb phrases, three prepositional phrases, three adjectival phrases in the language.
There are also lexical categories which consists of nouns.There are four examples of proper noun, four of common nouns, four of concrete nouns, four of abstract nouns, three of collective nouns, four of countable nouns, four of uncountable nouns in the language. There are verbs which consists of three transitive and three intransitive verbs. We have four adverbs, three adjectives, four prepositions, three conjunctions and three interjections. There are four basic word orders collected in the language as well.
1.7 Review of the chosen framework
The framework adopted in this research work is the Government and Binding (GB) theory. This is the theory that captures the similarities which exists between different categories of lexical phrases by assigning the same structure to them rather than having different phrase structure rules for vps, Nps etc.
Government and Binding theory deals with transformation. According to Radford (1988:419), transformation is the rule that deals with the act of changing the structure of one sentence to another structure through the concept of movement known as move alpha (move – α). This theory (GB) was developed to correct the lapses in Transformational Generative Grammar.
Cook (1988:86) states that, the theory of government and Binding is an interlocking arrang ement of principles and sub-theories which interact in many different ways.
THE MODULAR THEORY OF GRAMMAR
X-BAR THEORY PROJECTION PRINCIPLE
D-STRUCTURE LEXICON
MOVE – α θ – THEORY
BOUNDING (θ CRITERION)
CASE THEORY
(Case Filter)
S – STRUCTURE
PHONETIC FORM LOGICAL FORM
Sells (1985:25) and Cook (1988:33)
In the diagram above, no part can be considered in isolation from the rest. Government and Binding theory posit seven sub-theories of the theory of grammar. The structures generated at various levels are constrained by a set of theories, which define the kind of relationships possible within a grammar.
1.7.1 X-Bar Theory
Lamidi (2000:150) states that x-Bar theory is based on the theory of phrase structure. It defines the nature of the type of syntactic categories available to any language. The central notion of x-bar theory is that each of the major lexical categories (Noun, verb, preposition adverb) is the head of a structure dominated by a phrasal node of the same category (Noun: Np, verb: vp preposition: pp, and Adjective : Ap). In essence it defines possible phrase structure configuration in language. For instance, the phrase “The big boy” consists of a head ‘boy’ ‘hits a boy’ consists of a head ‘hits’.
X-bar theory is a component of linguistic theory which attempts to identify syntactic features presumably common to all those human languages that fit in presupposed (1965) framework. The X-bar theory projects from the ‘core projection level to the ‘maximal projection level’. This is called projection principle.
1.7.2 Projection principle
Chomsky (1981:29) states that ‘representation at each syntactic level is projected from the lexicon, in that they observe the sub-categorization properties of lexical items: projection principles require lexical properties to be projected to all levels of syntactic representation i.e. a lexical item projects from its zero bar level to one (single) bar level, which is optional, then to double bar level. The zero bar level is referred to as the core projection level, the single bar level is referred to as the intermediate projection level and the double bar level is referred to as the maximal projection level.
Horrocks (1987:99) states that x-bar theory tells us that a lexical head (x) and its complements form a constituent (X’) and that any specifier with a high level forms a constituents (X”).
X11
Spec X1
X0 comp.
The lexical entry projects onto the structure of the sentence, and its influence ceases at the double bar level. Another feature that makes generalization rule possible in X-bar theory is the concept of head. The notion of head of a phrase is called the principle of head parameter.
1.7.3 The principle of Head parameter
The principle of head parameter specified the order of elements in a language. The basic assumption of head parameter is that sentences may be broken into constituent phrase and structural grouping of words. Stowell (1981:70) says that the parametric variation between languages according to whether the positions of the head is first or last with respect to its complement is called head parameter. In other words, all phrases have heads of related and possible complements along with some others like its specifies.
Lamidi (2000:105) says that the head is the keyword in a phrase and the word can be pre or post modified. In essence, the head of a phrase is very important in X-bar theory and the parameter that distinguishes languages that incorporate the head of the phrase to the right or left of the hand is known as head parameter. That is, head first.
X à X0 complement
X1
X0 comp
X1 à complement X0
X
comp X0
To accommodate specifiers, it requires a second level of structure, putting the levels of specifier and complement together, the order of the head and specifier could be set separately from the order of the head and complement. Thus:
X11 à spec X1