Diss.--Hamburg. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 211-213.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1982. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-118).

Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 392-394).

<p>This paper argues that there is a finiteness distinction in Hdi and that the notion is of value for a description of the language. The definition of finiteness suitable for the language has been suggested to be the one given by Anderson (2007) combined with Bisang (2007). The finite clauses are argued to be the pragmatically independent ones while the non-finite clauses are argued to be the pragmatically dependent. However, no morphological reductions were found in the non-finite clauses relative to the finite ones. What is more, negation in Hdi shows a nontypical behaviour regarding finiteness properties as there are aspectual distinctions made for dependent clauses that are not made for independent. Verbless clauses and imperatives may be viewed as finite and non-finite depending on their capacity to licence independent predication or, alternatively, they may be viewed as not displaying finiteness properties at all. The latter is argued to be preferred in order to avoid a redundant definition of finiteness.</p>

This paper argues that there is a finiteness distinction in Hdi and that the notion is of value for a description of the language. The definition of finiteness suitable for the language has been suggested to be the one given by Anderson (2007) combined with Bisang (2007). The finite clauses are argued to be the pragmatically independent ones while the non-finite clauses are argued to be the pragmatically dependent. However, no morphological reductions were found in the non-finite clauses relative to the finite ones. What is more, negation in Hdi shows a nontypical behaviour regarding finiteness properties as there are aspectual distinctions made for dependent clauses that are not made for independent. Verbless clauses and imperatives may be viewed as finite and non-finite depending on their capacity to licence independent predication or, alternatively, they may be viewed as not displaying finiteness properties at all. The latter is argued to be preferred in order to avoid a redundant definition of finiteness.

This thesis describes basic grammatical features and lexicon of Matal, a Chadic language spoken by around 18 000 people in northern Cameroon. A translation of the New Testament is used as a parallel text for the purposes of this study. The identified language structures are compared with other Chadic languages. The results show that Matal is overall typical for the language family, except for the pronominal system, which lacks a clusivity distinction. Nouns and adjectives have a limited morphology, only expressing number as a grammatical category, whereas verbs have many categories that are expressed morphologically, by prefixation and suffixation. For finite verb forms, subject prefixes are obligatory. Tense is expressed either by altered tone in the stem vowel or morphologically. Several verbal suffixes with number and person variants have been identified, although their functions have not been entirely clarified. A system of complex adpositions that make extensive use of grammaticalized body concepts has also been inquired, within which the phenomenon of preposition agreement has been identified. Basic syntactic features, such as word order, negation and topicalization are also addressed. The analysis of the lexicon demonstrates that the basic vocabulary is mainly inherited from earlier stages of the language, but a large number of lexical loans in various semantic domains have also entered Matal. / Denna uppsats beskriver grundläggande grammatiska drag och ordförråd i Matal, ett tchadspråk som talas av omkring 18 000 personer i norra Kamerun. En översättning av Nya Testamentet används som parallelltext i denna studie. Identifierade språkliga strukturer jämförs med andra tchadspråk. Resultaten visar att Matal är på det stora hela typiskt för språkfamiljen, med undantag för det pronominella systemet, som inte uppvisar någon skillnad i klusivitet. Substantiv och adjektiv har en begränsad morfologi som endast uttrycker numerus som grammatisk kategori, medan verb har ett stort antal kategorier som uttrycks morfologiskt. Dessa har formen av affix som fogas både före och efterstammen. I finita verbformer är subjektprefix obligatoriska. Tempus kan uttryckas antingen genom ändrad ton i stamvokalen eller morfologiskt. Ett antal verbsuffix med varianter för numerus och person har identifierats, dock har deras funktion inte klarlagts helt. Ett system med komplexa adpositioner som i stor utsträckning använder sig av grammatikaliserade kroppsdelstermer har också undersökts, inom vilket fenomenet av prepositionskongruens i vissa komplexa adpositioner har påvisats. Grundläggande syntaktiska drag som ordföljd, negation och topikalisering tas också upp. Analysen av Matals lexikon visar att det grundläggande ordförrådet är företrädesvis nedärvt från tidigare språkstadier, men också att ett stort antal lånord i olika semantiska domäner har kommit in i språket.