Grammar of Kusaal
Kusaal is a Mabia (traditional Gur) language spoken in north-eastern Ghana. Until recently, there was a paucity of linguistic research on the language, thus, the need for a concise and lucid grammar. The study adopts a holistic linguistic approach to language documentation and description drawing on a corpus of synchronic data collected on fieldtrips. The analysis of the data is guided by a confluence of structural and functional grammar approaches following Payne (1997) and Dixon’s (2010) Basic Linguistic Theory. The phonology, nouns and noun class systems, nominal modifiers and relator nouns, verbs, phrases, aspect and modality, clause structure, verb serialisation and pragmatically marked structures are considered together with a speech form similar to «signifying/playing the dozens».
Anthony Agoswin Musah is a native speaker of Kusaal and a lecturer at the Gur-Gonja Department of the University of Education, Winneba. He holds bachelor and master’s degrees from the University of Ghana and received the PhD in African Studies (Linguistics) from the Goethe Universität of Frankfurt. His research interests include language documentation and description and the development of contact languages.