The structure of the Dagbani simple noun phrase

Abstract

This article discusses the structure of the Dagbani simple noun phrase. It is shown that, structurally, the Dagbani simple noun phrase is made up of the obligatory head noun and several optional elements. These optional elements generally follow the head noun of the simple noun phrase and so are labelled as post head modifiers. The adjective, the numeral, the demonstrative determiner and the quantifier are analysed as the modifiers of the simple noun phrase in Dagbani. These modifiers give certain grammatical or semantic information about the noun they modify. Though the Dagbani noun phrase may take several post modifiers, these modifiers are strictly ordered since each modifier has a prescribed syntactic slot.