Motivation for Using Multiple Deictic items in the Dagaare Nominal Group

What is it about?

In this new article, I examine the system of DEIXIS in the Dagaare (Niger_Congo: Gur/Mabia) nominal_group. Although many studies have indicated the use of multiple definite items (such as definite articles, possessives, and demonstratives) in the nominal group across languages, these exotic uses (e.g. the me, the my mother, the that my book) are often not explained. I examine this phenomenon in the West African language of Dagaare (spoken in Burkina Faso, Code d'Ivoire and Ghana), using live discourse data. I show that the definite article, possessives and demonstratives perform disassociated functions in Dagaare, respectively tracking and reactivating referents in the flow of information, indexing interactant role in discourse, and marking specificity of referents.

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Why is it important?

People aiming to design machine translation systems and other computer applications for West African languages need to consider these exotic uses in the structure of the nominal group