Abstract

This work carries a Morpho-Syntactic Analysis of Mungaka personal names. The theoretical framework used for this work is generative grammar postulated by Chomsky (1968), which was presented as a result of the weaknesses of the grammar before it.

This work is focused only on Mungaka personal names. In doing this research, the primary method of data collection was used. I consulted various authors on both published and unpublished works from the library and the internet.

At the end of this research, we uncovered some morphological processes that take place when deriving a name in Mungaka names and that the Mungaka names are not mere labels but comprise phrases and sentences that have both semantic and pragmatic meaning are associated with the names.

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

This research seeks to examine Morpho-Synta of Mungaka personal names. That is names that amount to phrases and full sentences in Mungaka and also to discuss the structure of the names. The first chapter will introduce the entire work as well as do a language survey.

The second chapter will focus on an overview of the aspects of the grammar of the language, while chapter three one of the main chapter will properly examine the morphology of Mungaka names and chapter four will look at the syntax of Mungaka personal names. This work will end with chapter five which is a summary of the entire work.

1.1 Geographical location of Bali Nyonga

Bali Nyonga is one of the five Chamba kingdoms of the North West Region of Cameroon. It is one of the sub-division of Mezam, Titanji et al. (1988:9) Bali Nyonga is located within¬ 9 40E and 10 50E longitudes. It extends from latitudes 5 50N to 610N of the equator. The sub-division is bounded in the North and East by Bamenda Central subdivision in the south by Batibo subdivision and in the West by Mbengwi subdivision.

The Bamenda – Mamfe road passes through Bali from this principal road. There are many secondary roads leading to villages within the subdivision and beyond. The Bali Nyonga subdivision covers an area of about 19sq.km (Conrade, 1974) with a population density then, of 125 persons per square km. presidential decree No 66/DF/433 of 26 August 1966 initially made Bali an administrative district within Mezam division. 79/469 of 14 November 1976 to raise it to the statues of a subdivision.

Many geographical factors have enabled the Bali subdivision to develop relatively faster than other chiefdoms in the Western grass field. These include the relief structure, the drainage pattern, the climate, the vegetation, and soil

The Bali Nyonga subdivision lies at the foot of the Bambutu plateau which is the South-west limit of the Western highlands. To a large extent, the sub-division is separated from its North Eastern neighbours: by an escapement while her North Eastern neighbours: Nsongwa, Mbatu,  Chomba, Mbu, and Pinyin are located on the limits of the Bambutu plateau.

Thus, Bali is a low-lying region or a basin receiving the rivers from the rest of the high land places. These rivers bring aluminum that adds to the fertility of the sub-division, making it the grain winner of the region.

It is important to note that in spite of the structure of the basin, Bali has also highlands with peaks such as Oluku(1.67m) Mbutu, Kobpin (1.388m) Mbeluh Kumbat, Fukang (1.535m) in the North East and South-East regions into the west region has some highlands such as Ntanko’o(1.348) Gawola and Ngwenjang.

There is also a broad river valley generally oriented North East/South West following the topographical structure. Some of these include Naka, Tobmbufung, Mantum, Boh-Montoh, Sepua and Kontan.

As earlier stated, Bali is drained by many rivers rising from the highlands of the North and East of the region. Most of the rivers are intermitted whereas some are the main tributaries of big rivers. An example is the river Menchum. Although Bali belongs to the humid tropical zone, the rainfall is moderated by the altitude and distance from the sea. Rainfall varies between 2.000 and 3.00mm per annum.

The rains are brought by the South West monsoon trade winds which flow perturbed over the Bali land but sometimes cannot climb the escarpment owing to the high altitude, thereby enabling Bali to receive relief raising of its structure. The rainfall is seasonal, between March and October. The dry season starts in November and ends between March and October. The dry season starts from November and ends in a mid-March recording titled rain.

Bali is the foot of the extinct volcanic mountains consequently it belongs to the volcanic soils. The rich soils as well as the alluvium brought by rivers and the rather long rainy season have altogether favored two farming seasons in Bali. Meanwhile, the hill slopes which are generally underlined by lateritic soils are less fertile but enable the growth of grass on which cattle grazed.

It will therefore be noticed from the foregoing brief geographical introduction that the Bali sub-division lies on a favorable relief feature and it is blessed with a good drainage pattern that does not only supply water but also brings alluvium to add to its fertility.

The climate and vegetation is a combination of enviable human and animal attractions and the geology underlying, adds to the basic soil requirements for man’s habitation since time immemorial. Such as an attraction must have led to many groups scrambling for its occupation so much so that, it is difficult today to state who the original occupants were, our attempt to trace the outline history of  Bali however will lead us to identify some of the recent occupants of this admirable region.

1.2 A Brief Historical Background of Bali Nyonga

The exact origin of the Chambas is not clear but oral traditions say that they came from the East via Sudan and settled in the North between Nigeria and Cameroon. At their settlement near river Benue, they founded the Dindi kingdom and mingled with the PuliMbatsu’ (RedipFulani ), and taught them farming and occasional Fulani raid led by Adama forced them to leave their settlement in the Adamawa region of Cameroon on their way to Adamawa, they incorporated the Balo – Kontcha, Nauli, Balede and the Buti Suga tribes into their kingdom. On reaching Adamawa, they settled East of Ngoundere where some Tikar groups joined them to form a Chamba raiding mounted – bowmen to which the name ‘Ba’ ‘ni’ was given. They camped in Wiya clan and carried out several raids during which time Bui’s old capital of Kovifem was raided. They then moved Eastwards while incorporating the Kufads and finally to Banyo where some Tikali and more Buti people joined them.

Due to some unknown reason, the Chamba tribe broke into two, one led Gynda moved North Westwards toward Takum while the other led by Gawolbe, son of Gangsin moved to the Bamenda area while continuing with their war raids. Gawolbe’s contingent set up a war camp at Ngie, while some raiding parties succeeded, the one that went to Mundani and Southern Moghamo had a counter-attack.

Consequently, a joined group fought at Bakem-Bafu funding near Dschang where they lost most men, horses, and most of all, their leader Gawolbe. The death of Gawolbe caused a split of the Chamba into seven continents. Ganyama led the Mudi contingent Northwards through Bamenda to form the Benue Chamba. Part of Ganyama formed a village now in the Fru Awa district in Menchum division. Galanga led his group and founded Bali kumbad, Gavabo founded Bali Gangsin and Gaam founded Bali Gashou in Ndop subdivision. Nyongpasi –son of prince Na’ Nyonga founded Bali Nyonga. Bali N’kohtan whose leader is not known first settledat the present site occupied by Bali Nyonga.

Nyongpasiled his contingent wherein an attempt to defeat them was instead expelled with his followers. They incorporated the Batis, Wons, kundems, Fulengs, Munyams, Ngiams, Sangams, Sets. The Batoks (Bawocks) and the Kumjas come in later. Today, all the incorporated people form the major population of Bali Nyonga and are referred to as “Banten or lo’lo” people. The ba’nis who are the indigenous Bali comprise the Pli, Buti Kontcha, Buti Suga, Tikali, Kufad and Ti. There are still many people who came from other tribes living in Bali Nyonga .source: (Fokwang John in his Bali popular names)

1.3 Aims and Objectives

The objectives of this study are to identify the morpho-syntax of Mungaka personal names and to analyze the syntactic functions and structures of Mungaka personal names. This study aims at examining the meaning and relevance of names and explore these names from larger constituents such as phrases, clauses, and sentences when translated into the English language.

1.4 Linguistic classification

Haven situated Bali Nyonga geographically and historically, we shall now discuss its linguistic classification. Before doing that we shall, first of all, understand what linguistic classification is all about.

Classification deals with the grouping of language into families according to their linguistic typologies. Linguistic classification helps to establish a historical relationship between languages. Many linguists have attempted the classification of African languages but the most used is that of Joseph Greenberg (1966). The classification of languages however led to the discovery of four languages phyla that is Afro-asiatic, Nilo-saharan, Niger Congo and Kohsian.

According to Grimes (1992), the Niger-Congo language phylum has 1.436 languages and as such possesses the largest phylum in the world. Cameroon, therefore, is blessed not only with having the largest phylum but with Afro-Asiatic and Nilo Saharan phyla.

Cameroon, therefore, is not an African in miniature in natural resources but also in language.    Koenig et al. (1983:29) in their classification of Cameroon home language, agree with Greenberg’s (1995:12). (1963) classification.

1.5 Literature Review

The literature review has to do with providing a critique of the materials that have been published on the topic. So much work has been done already on the Mungaka language.

Aspects like morphology of the language were looked at by Valeria Nahjella (1997). She also looked at,  phonemics, phrase, and sentence types in Mungaka language. Also David Foncham (1973) worked on an aspect of phonology in Mungaka

Hyman (1980) also provides a fuller discussion of Mungaka noun phrase. Of course, these works were very necessary for the realization of this project.

1.6 Theoretical Framework

Theoretical frameworks in linguistic is linguistics systems that can be used to explain the features of all languages. The framework used for this work is the generative syntax which came as a result of the shortcoming of structural grammar. The generative syntax of transformational grammar presents sets of rules that indicate the structure and interpretation of sentences that native speakers of a language accept as belonging to the language.

Also, the framework of generative phonology is used during the phonological analyses of some names. Phonological processes such as labialization, palatalization, and vowel deletion are used in this work.

1.7 Methodology

This has to do with the collection of data for analysis, two principal methods are usually identified being the primary and secondary. Both the primary and secondary methods were used for data collection, the primary research method was used as the researcher visited various cultural meetings and interviewed Mungaka natives through a bilingual approach. For the secondary methods, books and journals from Koyela Fokwang were also contacted.

The elicitation of the wordlist was controlled as questions were asked to get the meaning of the Mungaka version. Here the researcher will elicit the list of Mungaka personal names from the language consultant in other to have the required information about the work done from a typical native speaker of the language.

The informants were selected based on their efficiency in a speech in the language, availability, and their understanding about what the researcher’s intention at the end of this report.

1.8 Research Problem

The morpho-syntactic analysis of Mungaka personal names was undertaken to find out how words are combined to form names and their meanings. The study also attempts to describe the morphological and phonological pattern of a personal names. Much work has been in Mungaka language but to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, none has been done in Mungaka personal names.

Research on personal names has mainly been concerned with diachronic development, thereby focusing on etymological problems and the history of names. The distinction between personal names and proper noun and the central question is whether personal names are equipped with specific morpho-syntactic properties and to what extend and in what way these features differs from those of common noun. The researcher strives to bring together insights about the morph-syntactic properties of personal names.

1.9 Research Questions

The study attempts to answer the following questions

1. What is the morphological structure of personal names in Mungaka?
2. What is the syntactic interpretation of the meaning of Mungaka personal names?
3. What is the social and cultural significance of names and meanings express in Mungaka?
4. Why personal names are morpho-syntactically different from a common nouns?

1.10 Organization of the scope of work 

This work aims at examining the Morpho-Syntax of Mungaka personal names, this work is divided into five chapters. Chapter one provides information about what we set out to do in this work. It is made up of a general introduction, geographical location of the target language, aims, and objectives, research questions, difficulties encountered, linguistic classification, historical information, literature review, theoretical framework, methodology, the scope of work, expected result, and conclusion.

Chapter two comprises the aspect of grammar in the Mungaka language that is looking at the phonology and syntax of the Mungaka language. Chapter three on its own part examines the morphology of Mungaka personal names meanwhile chapter four covers the syntax of Mungaka personal names. Lastly, chapter five is the conclusion of the entire work.