Isaac N. Mwinlaaru

This project converts my PhD thesis into a book-length grammar of Dagara-Lobr, a cross-border language of Ghana and Burkina Faso that has not been adequately described. The project examines three aspects of Dagara-Lobr, namely noun class system, aspect and tense, and modality. It proposes a layered nominal classification system for Dagara-Lobr, where, for instance, the class of [+human] nouns are morphologically sub-classified into different kinds of social and ontological classes and lower order ontological entities such as [-human] nouns are given less morphological diversity. It also uses Dagara-Lobr aspect and tense systems to challenge the typology of languages into tense-prominent and aspect prominent languages and motivate further research in this area. The study further examines modality, showing how competing modal systems of the verbal group and of clause final particles interact. The project is significant in modelling a discourse-oriented description of languages and in contributing to cutting-edge typological issues.