Ewe Language - Grammar

Grammar

Ewe is a subject–verb–object language. The possessive precedes the head noun. Adjectives, numerals, demonstratives and relative clauses follow the head noun. Ewe also has postpositions rather than prepositions.

Ewe is well known as a language having logophoric pronouns. Such pronouns are used to refer to the source of a reported statement or thought in indirect discourse, and can disambiguate sentences that are ambiguous in most other languages. The following examples illustrate:

  • Kofi be e-dzo 'Kofi said he left' (he ≠ Kofi)
  • Kofi be yè-dzo 'Kofi said he left' (he = Kofi)

In the second sentence, yè is the logophoric pronoun.

Ewe also has a rich system of serial verb constructions.

Read more about this topic:  Ewe Language

Famous quotes containing the word grammar:

    Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.
    Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886)

    All the facts of nature are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a double, treble or centuple use and meaning.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)