A Grammar of Emai

Abstract

This reference grammar is the first ever description of West Africa’s Edoid language Emai. It incorporates narrative, lexical and grammatical field results over the last three decades. Treated are morphology, syntax and argument structure after an introductory phonology and orthographic overview highlighting grammatical and lexical tone. Individual chapters delineate noun and verb phrase structure as well as clause shape in discourse and clause combination. Noun inflection and derivation are detailed as is verb inflection in the context of tense, aspect and modality. Noun phrase character encompasses remnant noun classes, nominal modification types and pronoun forms followed by conjunction. Verb phrase features include complex predicates, both verbs in series and verb plus postverbal particle, functionally distinct copulas, double objects, and sentence complement types constrained by matrix verb. Also analyzed are preverbal and postverbal adverbials relative to information question types. Multi-clause constructions are profiled as to coding varieties across dependent clauses as well as precedence relations. A concluding chapter presents a sample narrative in orthographic form, interlinear gloss and English free translation.