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Preverbs are positionally-delimited grammatical forms that remain understudied. We examine their semantic classes in West Benue Congo (WBC) and its minor language Emai, which until recently was undocumented. Preverb classes in Emai display a subset of semantic categories identified in Dixon (1991, 2006, 2010) and Nuyts (2001, 2005, 2006, 2016). There are eight semantic classes for 30 odd preverb forms. They are apportioned according to their qualitative or quantitative character. Preverbs do not include traditional auxiliary categories of aspect, tense, and modality, which exhibit distinct diachronic and synchronic character. Common to preverbs is their orientation to grammatical subject, rather than utterance speaker. Members of each class ascribe a property to clausal subject. Preliminary evidence suggests that preverbs of similar semantic character exist in other West African languages.

We re-assess the gender system of Ogbe-Oloma, an Edoid village variety of Nigeria. System exponents are prefixes that define form class and reflect grammatical number. We find that eight agreement classes undergird fourteen genders, while seventeen nominal form classes frame twenty-five number inflections. Prefix mapping from inflection to gender is non-isomorphic. Mapping is however constrained by syllable shape, CV- versus V-, and alliterative sound quality of prefix consonant, not vowel. In addition, several number inflections trigger agreement in multiple genders leading to one gender that exclusively refers to nouns with human reference.

We examine metatony and its grammatical conditioning in an under described Edoid language of West Africa. In Emai, metatony on verbs is signaled by perfective suffix -í with underlying high tone. With a following adjunct, tone on this suffix is high and retained. When clause final, -í is retained but with low tone. When followed by a verb argument, the -í suffix is prohibited. Verbs with a following S-constituent exhibit metatonic asymmetry. Class one verbs prohibit suffix -í, treating S-constituents as verb arguments. Class two verbs require high tone -í, as if their S-constituent were an adjunct. When these same class two verbs occur with an immediately following cognate object nominal, they prohibit suffix -í. We interpret this asymmetric behavior of class two verbs in terms of boundary permeability (Berg 2014). We posit that class two forms are transitive and that their S-constituent derives historically from a complex Noun S-constituent structure that has become truncated and assumed a simple S-constituent form, having lost its erstwhile “cognate object noun.” It is thus the strict boundary for transitivity imposed by perfective suffix -í that signals a weakened status of S-constituents with class two verbs.

This paper applies a model of tonosyntax designed for the Dogon languages to Emai, another language of West Africa that belongs to the Edoid group. The Dogon model aligns with and diverges from the tonosyntax of Emai. In Dogon noun phrases, an adnominal controller prompts a {L} (low) tone overlay onto the lexical tone of a left-adjacent target. Numerals, quantifiers and discourse markers fail as controllers. In Emai, most adnominals except cardinal numerals and discourse markers trigger a {H} overlay on a left-adjacent head or other adnominal. Emai varies from Dogon on two additional counts. Emai quantifiers prompt tonal overlay. In addition, right edge lexical /H/ constrains {H} overlay. We conclude by positing a potential relation between low {L} vs high {H} overlay and Clements and Railland’s (2008) lax vs tense prosody types.

Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) remind us that manner and result verbs often exhibit complementary distribution within a given language. They also note that when a main verb lexically specifies manner or result, the complementary component can be expressed outside the verb, in a satellite constituent of some sort. In Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010), manner/result complementarity constrains verb root lexicalization. Building on this, Erteschik-Shir and Rapoport (2010) examine English verbs of contact, e.g. smear, splash, whose complements specify a result relation between moveable object and stationary locatum. Classically, these verbs show a locative alternation with holistic ~ partitive interpretations (Levin 1993).For this paper I examine forceful contact expressions in Emai (West Benue Congo, Edoid in Williamson and Blench 2000). Relatively strict SVO, Emai manifests little inflectional morphology and few prepositions. Its motion predications express manner and result as one verb in series with another (la ‘run’ and shan ‘move through’ for ‘run through’) or as verb plus postverbal particle (sion ‘thread’ and o ‘onto’ for ‘thread onto’).Lacking verbs in series or postverbal particles, forceful contact in Emai reflects simple and complex predications. Predicates like transitive hian ‘strike’ or so ‘collide, bang into’ take a subject expressing moveable object and a direct object conveying locatum (òjè só ùdékèn [Oje collide wall] ‘Oje collided with / banged into the wall’).Related complex predications explicitly code contact means. English near equivalents are ‘punch,’ ‘kick,’ ‘peck,’ ‘bite’ and ‘pinch.’ Corresponding Emai predications with hian or so require means of contact, expressed as a body-part noun (èkpà ‘fist,’ ízà ‘heel,’ úkpà ‘beak,’ àkòn ‘tooth,’ éhìén ‘fingernail’) covertly linked to a subject referent, followed by a preposition marked locatum. With a nonhuman locatum, body-part means (serving as moveable object) occurs in direct object position and a place noun locatum appears as preposition vbi object (òhí só ékpá vbì ìtébù [Ohi collide fist LOC table] ‘Ohi’s fist collided with the table/ Ohi’s fist banged on the table’). With a human locatum, the means body-part nominal is retained but a distinct body-part noun occurs as vbi object and its external possessor immediately follows the verb and precedes the moveable object (òhí só ójé ékpá vbì èò [Ohi collide Oje fist LOC face] ‘Ohi’s fist collided with Oje’s face / Ohi punched Oje in the face’). Human locatum predications also show an alternation lacking the vbi phrase (òhí só ójé èkpà [Ohi collide Oje fist] ‘Ohi’s fist collided with Oje / Ohi punched Oje’). There is however no simple transitive predication that combines as core arguments possessors, with or without their body parts (*òhí só òjè ‘Ohi punched Oje’), or subject possessor and locatum (*òhí só ùdékèn ‘Ohi punched the door’). As a consequence, result is privileged in Emai expression of forceful contact, downgrading manner through use of nominal forms and their partitive relations. English, as manner prominent in this domain, reveals a contrary type, where manner is obligatorily verb expressed (punch) and result is optionally available via prepositional satellite (on).

Threats of imminent extinction motivate language documentation; they also allow place name neglect. This paper examines settlement names within Africa’s Edoid group. Village nomenclature converges on a restricted range of conventions; however, interethnic contact has led to non-Edoid toponyms for three villages. Two derive from the trade language Hausa. A third links to Igbo blacksmiths supporting rainforest penetration with iron tools, as is evident in cognate vocabulary. Iron use most naturally follows a pastoral era outside the rainforest, which number prefixes on herd-animal nouns support. Toponymic studies thus remind us of the benefit accrued when documentation looks beyond “the single ancestral code.”

This paper builds on Newman's (2002a) crosslinguistic observation that posture verbs equivalent to sit/stand/lie exhibit distributional asymmetry shown by the hierarchy STAND > SIT > LIE and that they evolve into locative and aspectual markers through the grammaticalization path POSTURE > LOCATIVE > ASPECT. To assess these proposals, we engage data from Nigeria's Edoid language Emai. It has verbs with a polysemous structure encompassing posture ('stand', 'sit', 'lie') and continuative state ('wait', 'stay', 'sleep'). Important for selecting between contrasting sense assignments are the parameters of spatial and temporal extent. Minimal verb constructions exhibit either posture or continuative state interpretations. Constructions with locative complement, temporal adjunct or verb in series absolutely or partially constrain sense assignment. Asymmetry of sense assignment and of assignment within each sense leads to alternative proposals for the posture verb hierarchy as well as grammaticalization path.

This paper examines the equational identity (El) construction in Nigeria's Edoid language Emai. It weighs this construction's grammatical properties against a complex of equational identity patterns developed in the crosslinguistic investigations of Stassen (1997). Although EI properties reveal its functional heritage, they fail to conform fully to Stassen's findings. While EI noun phrases are sensitive to information structure and definiteness values, the construction as a whole fails to exhibit crucial features. It evinces no third person limitation, manifests limited predicational structure, and demonstrates compatibility with a restricted range of temporal categories, although not indicative tense/aspect. It is the last of these that highlights the EI construction's obligatory subjunctive marking and its non-deictic temporal character.

This paper examines parameters characterizing causative motion constructions in Emai, a Benue-Congo language of Nigeria's Edoid group. Parameters surfacing in our analysis and noted in the literature include the temporal relations +/-motion and +/-launch as well as the effect relations +/-bounded and +/-distributive. In addition, however, we uncover a restriction grounded to +/-human in one type of causative motion construction marked by the post-verbal particle e. It conveys the launch of an affected object with respect to a +human reference point. Comparison of acceptable and unacceptable e constructions reveals the crucial licensing function of accompanying verbs and their complements. Verbs must encode the launch or ballistic projection of an affected object through space and, in turn, the affected object must exhibit a sustained temporal effect, i.e. adherence, relative to its human reference point. We conclude that the +human restriction in this construction is inextricably linked to the parameters of +launch and +adherence.

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A synchronic morphophonemic pattern of alternation constituting a single phonological process in Tswana, a Southeastern Bantu language, is examined.2 In order to account tentatively for this process, a discussion of its motivation and structure is undertaken. Two motivating conditions are identified: the Reflexive morpheme and a syllabic nasal consonant. Restricting subsequent discussion to the nasal condition, a hierarchical strength structure is postulated to underlie the process. This postulated strength hierarchy appears to follow from two principles, an Intersyllable Principle derived from Hooper (1976) and the Inertial Development Principle found in Foley (1977).

Semcntic noun classes in Emai, an Edoid language of Nigeria, are examined with respect to a process of Reference Point Marking (RPM) in order to explore the relationship between discourse and lexical semantics. Across preand post-verbal positions subcategorized by verbs like rere to be far' these classes are shown to attract RPM in a variable manner. To describe this variability, it proves useful to recognize a spatial stability continuum ranging across and within nouns of place and nonplace, as well as two constraints. For constructions combining place and nonplace nouns, RPM affects the latter, irrespective of its position. And for constructions combining exclusively place or nonplace nouns, RPM affects not only nonplace nouns in post-verbal position but the pre-verbal noun when the spatial position of its refer?nt represents new information in discourse. Finally, through apparent irregularities in their application, these constraints on discourse form and lexical semantics are shown to interlock with assumptions of spatial stability differentially assigned to nominals functioning as Figure or Ground.

Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1986), pp. 485-496