A Grammar of Miya - UCLA Department of Linguistics

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260 A Grammar of Miya
pragmatically feasible. Since the phrases cited here contain only a noun (or pronoun), the
effect is that the quantifier modifies the noun. See 9:§5.2 for more discussion.
4.4. Ordinal numerals. Formally, noun phrases containing ordinal numeral modifiers
are linked genitive constructions (§3.3) with N2 being a cardinal numeral. I found two
types of ordinal structures. The first, volunteered in elicitation, is simply N 1 + Linker +
Cardinal #. The second type, which I found only in a text, has the same linked structure
but the numeral bears prefixed and suffixed a (cf. 8:§5 for adverbial forms derived fron:
nouns with -a suffixes and occasionally a- prefixes).
Type 1 Type 2
sgm na wutS
sgm na vaatlg
'am ta tS'1f
'the first man' 'm-aka tal n-aatsgra 'the second mixing of beer'
'the fifth man'
'the second woman'
5. Constrnctions with BA/MA/SaBA 'one who has ... , does
Corresponding to Hausa mai (sg), masu (pi) 'one who has ... , one who does ... ',
Miya has the following three words:
{ ba maSCUline}
rna feminine (tone = H, with downstepped H after H)
sgba plural
Agreement for "animates" is with lexical gender for singulars and plural for plurals; for
"inanimates", agreement is always lexical gender, regardless of number (see 8:§2.3.3 for
discussion of "animacy").
Ealmal saba form a tonal phrase with their following complement as well as with a
preceding coreferential noun (3:§6). Saba has underlying H tone, resulting in L in phrase
initial position by INITIAL H LOWERING (3:§3.!) and (downstepped) H elsewhere. Ea and
ma are two from a small group of words which have the following tonal characteristics: H
in tone phrase initial position and after L but downstepped H after H.l3
Like their Hausa counterparts, these words can themselves be heads of noun phrases,
or they can be attributive modifiers to nominal heads, e.g. Hausa masu kuai, Miya si;ba
mir 'those who have money'; Hausa mata masu kudi, Miya (avam saba mir 'women who
have money'. The Miya words participate in a broader range of constructions than their
counterparts in Hausa or other Chadic languages that I am familiar with. For a description
of Miya, it is desirable to present in one place all the constructions using these words. In
order to facilitate cross-linguistic comparison, I have broken the description down into
several partly structural, partly semantic categories. The boundaries between these
categories, from the point of view of Miya structure, is sometimes arbitrary.
13See 3:§5 for a list of words with these characteristics. In the case of balma, I transcribed most of my
examples with downstepped H following H, but I did transcribe some examples with a H at the same level
as preceding H. Some of these could be transcription errors, but I have enough examples of both tone
patterns to think that there is probably variation. Examples here are as transcribed in my field notes.
I
5.1. BA/MA/saBA + simple noun or noun phrase
10. Noun Phrase Syntax (§5) 261
5.1.1. "Possessor of ... ". With concrete nouns, the head is understood as possessing
the object. With nouns expressing a quality, the balmalsaba + quality can be translated as
an attributive adjective (see §4.1 for true attributive adjectives):
ba k3m 'householder, "sir'" (Hausa mai gida)
sgba kam 'householders'
bii mir 'one who has money' (m)
mamir 'one who has money' (f)
soba mir 'ones with money'
ba yuw 'madman' (possessor of madness)
rna ytiw 'madwoman'
soba ytiw 'madmen'
ritwun b:i shinefo 'cold wind' (wind possessing coldness)
silkwam rna piyato 'sweet honey' (honey possessing sweetness)
som b:i kyarati/'am rna kyarati/sgbo sgba kyarati
'tall man/tall woman/tall people' (man/woman/people possessing tallness)
som ba kalakg/'am rna kalakg
'worthless man/worthless woman' (man/woman possessing worthlessness)
The negated counterpart ('one who does not have .. .') uses a nominalized verbal
construction (see §5.1.2) with the verb kwd 'lack':
ba kwaa mir (m) 'one who has no money'
makwaa mir (f)
soba kwaa mIT (pi)
I found one quality word, dmbdn 'good(ness), beauty', which adds the adjectival
agreement suffixes (§4.!) though it is a noun in a balmalsaba phrase:
acarn ba mbanna
soram rna mbanya
kiltg sgba mbiinniy
'good work'
'good knife'
'good thing(s)'
bandzghg ba mbanna
bazani rna mbanya
wutlg tgVam sgba mbanniy
'handsome youth'
'beautiful girl'
'beautiful girls'
5.1.2. Agentive: 'one who does ' With nouns expressing some activity,
including deverba1 nouns (4:§2.3), phrases headed by balmalsaba are understood as one
who does the action expressed by the noun. This construction could be considered a type
of subject relative (§5.2.!). One may differentiate the agentive phrase from the subject
relative by the verb forms in the respective phrases. Agentive phrases use a noun or
deverbal noun, whereas subject relatives use a participle (4:§2.1). The two types of
phrases are also distinct semantically. Subject relatives are tensed, whereas agentives are
generic descriptive phrases.
b:i dim-, (PI) sgba dimba
kitlirati
'hunter' « dlar 'hunting'; no associated verb)
'fearful person' « dkitlirati 'fear'; no associated verb)
• ( ............................... .J. .......... ____________________ .. t