TITLE:
A Pragmatic Analysis of Dagbani Discourse Markers
AUTHORS:
Mohammed Abubakari Rashid, Salifu Abdul-Bachi, Ibrahim Alhassan
KEYWORDS:
Dagbani, Pragmatics, Grammar, Thetical and Discourse Markers
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.12 No.2,
March
29,
2022
ABSTRACT: This paper seeks to investigate discourse markers in Dagbani, a Mabia language spoken in the Northern Region of Ghana. The study aims at identifying the Dagbani discourse markers by drawing data from both primary and secondary sources. Primary data was obtained from normal conversations among individuals at social gatherings and game playing joints where individuals gather and engage in conversations, while secondary data were gotten from some Dagbani novels. Data from both Nanuni (Southern Dialect) of Dagbani and standard dialect were sampled randomly and analyzed base on the social context and the pragmatics of the various markers employed in the discourse. The study also establishes the category of discourse markers displayed in the various conversations, guided by the Discourse Grammar Framework. The study found that, Dagbani discourse markers can be categorized into Thetical and Sentence Grammar with the Theticals dominating in many of the conversations such as w?yiyo “sorry”, laabirata “truly”, Oo! “Oh!”, yεima?li “actually/truly”, lala “really”, leaving few under Sentence Grammar category such as amaa “but”. However, Aa! “Ah! ” is used as a discourse marker to disjoint information.