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66 67 Studies of the Department of African Languages and Cultures, No 44, 2010

66 67 Studies of the Department of African Languages and Cultures, No 44, 2010 ISSN 0860-4649 Hafizu Miko Yakasai Bayero University Kano, Nigeria Incantation in Hausa Culture: An Example of Syntactic Reduplication Resumé L’article porte sur la reduplication dans la langue haoussa, suivant une approche pragmatique. Il y est question de la reduplication de mots et de phrases dans les formules incantatoires magiques. Du point de vue linguistique, ce genre de reduplication est considéré comme un procédé syntactique. Or, les énoncés à caractère magique, dans lesquels on a souvent recours à la reduplication, ont un pouvoir performatif et doivent augmenter l'effectivité des procédés visant p.ex. à se protéger contre les moustiques, à rendre quelqu'un invisible, ou à faciliter l'accouchement. La répétition des mots et des phrases a généralement pour but d'augmenter l’effectivité de l’action ou la rendre immédiate, mais elle peut simplement exprimer l’impatience. L’article contient des exemples d’incantations en haoussa et en poular, accompagnés d'indications sur les fonctions pragmatiques des reduplications. 1. Introduction Reduplication as universal phenomenon operates within lexical units and a clausal structure. In a number of languages, reduplication within lexical units is used to express or to build pluractional verbs, augmentative and diminutive adjectives, simple adjectives, inten- sives of adverbs, numbers, among others. This type of reduplication operates within a morpheme, and it could be partial or complete, as argued in Kiyomi 1993, Rubino 2005, Inkelas and Zoll 2005, among others. On the other hand, reduplication that operates outside the lexical units involves repetition of a clause or part of a clause as dis- 68 cussed in Israeli 1997, Lindström 1999, Maas 2005, Yakasai 2005, among others. Most languages that exhibit reduplication within lexi- cal units also undergo the clausal one. The productivity of the former implies the productivity of the latter. Hausa is a Chadic language of Afro-Asiatic phylum that produc- tively uses reduplication within lexical units and in a clausal struc- ture. The morphological and semantic aspects of Hausa reduplicated forms became subject of many linguistic works such as Frajzyngier 1965, Pawlak 1975, Newman 1990, Schuh 2002, Al-Hassan 1998, Yakasai 2009, Gouffé 1975, Auwal 1998, Yakasai 2006a, Yakasai 2006b, among others, whereas pragmatic function of reduplication, and its possible cultural context still need research. This paper discusses incantation in Hausa culture as an example of reduplicative construction that uses clauses or phrases. In Hausa culture, there are number of ways or practices that indicate reduplica- tive construction within clausal or phrasal domain; incantation is one of those cultural practices that expresses reduplication beyond one lexical unit and fills more than one syntactic slot. The scope of this paper is to lay emphasis on syntactic reduplication occurring within a sentence, clause or phrase. In view of this, the paper is divided into four main sections. The first section discusses nature and theoretical assumptions of syntactic reduplication. The second section focuses on incantation in Hausa culture and its classification. The third part presents incantation as an example of syntactic reduplication. The fourth section examines the pragmatic senses of syntactic reduplica- tion in relation to incantation in Hausa culture. 2. Syntactic Reduplication: Its Nature and Theoretical Assump- tion The term syntactic reduplication (henceforth SR) covers reduplic- ative constructions that go beyond one lexical unit and fill more than one syntactic slot. In a number of works, SR is included in studies of reduplicated forms of particular language, for instance Wierzbicka 1991 in Italian, Israeli 1997 in Russian, Lindström 1999 in Swedish, Maas 2005 in Arabic, Gouffé 1975 and Yakasai 2005 in Hausa, among others. In contemporary linguistics, the subject is of more 69 general theoretical interest, since this phenomenon is regarded as one of the linguistic universals and icons. As Wierzbicka (1991: 260) argues “it seems likely that the pragmatic meanings associated with ‘clausal repetition’ have led, through wide use, to the emergence of new grammatical category, a language-specific grammatical device ‘syntactic reduplication’”. Wierzbicka (1991) distinguishes Italian syntactic reduplication from two seemingly similar phenomena as exemplified in (1a and 1b). (1) a. adagio adagio ‘slowly slowly’ b. adagio, adagio ‘slowly, slowly’ The reduplicated expression given in (1a) is distinguished from repetition in (1b). The former is a pauseless expression, while the latter is indicated by the use of a comma (which signals the presence of a pause). Lindström (1999) exemplifies that two or more juxtaposed pro- nominal adjectives indicate this type of repetition (as in 2a), and it may form a unit by coordination (as in 2b). (2) a. sme sme barn ‘little little children’ b. springer och springer ‘I run and run’ Looking at the above examples, it is very clear that SR operates on words rather than a morpheme, and it forms a clause or part of a clause rather than lexical unit. Lindström (1999) argues that SR “[….] have a pragmatic rather than a direct semantic motivation. Reduplication communicates most often the speakers emotional stance towards the subject matter. When one says sma sma barn there is no claim about extreme smallness, but rather the speaker expresses his or her feelings about ‘little little children’; this can, of course, relate to a cute, moving kind of small- ness. In other words, this repetition has typical diminutive connota- 70 tions, not seldom universally expressed with a reduplicative con- struction” (taken from the English summary of the dissertation). Moreover, Wierzbicka (1991: 264) points out that the communic- ative import of SR is to insist on the validity of what is said and it means that SR may have prosodic dimension. Gouffé (1975) has indicated that the effect of echo and symmetry play an important role in creating reduplicated forms in Hausa, for both stylistic device and harmony of the text. SR here indicates that a sentence or some ele- ments in a sentence, a clause or a phrase that are repeated. Indeed, some aspects of reduplication that are based on repetition of the con- tent not the form are taken into consideration, as well as reduplica- tion understood as prosodic effect of symmetry or echo. SR operates on words and has the syntactic motivation, and the reduplication that operates within a word has the morphological motivation. The argu- ment that SR has pragmatic rather than semantic motivation (as ar- gued in Wierzbicka 1991, Lindström 1999, Yakasai 2005, among others) is adopted here for the analysis of Hausa incantation phrases. 2.1. Nature of SR in Hausa The productivity of morphological reduplication in Hausa implies the productivity of SR in Hausa. It is this productivity that creates different typological patterns of SR. The typological patterns pre- sented in (Yakasai 2005) are adopted here. These are: (3) repeated phrases, i.e. kai1, kai, kai /you, you, you/ ‘stop, stop, stop’; zoo, zoo ‘come, come’; Koo dà mèe, koo don mèe /or and what, or for what/ ‘all means’ (4) conjoined reduplicated phrases, i.e. râi dà râi /soul and soul / ‘always’; 1 For all Hausa examples, low tone is indicated with a grave accent (`), falling tone by a circumflex (ˆ) and high tone is left unmarked. Long vowels are indicated by doubling the affected vowel, hence -aa ‘long’ versus -a ‘short’. 71 idòo dà idòo / eye and eye / ‘meeting each other’; koomai yanàa tàfiyàa daidai wà daidà ‘everything goes well’ (5) reduplicated clauses (verbal phrases), i.e. yà cìka, yà cìka / let him be filled, let him be filled / (idiomatic sense: ‘he is angry’); yà kai, yà kaawoo / let him take, let him bring / (idiomatic sense: ‘going back and forth’; (6) disjoined clauses with a sense of reduplication, e.g. Mù jee zuwàa, mahàukàcii yaa hau kuuraa / let us go /, / madman rode hye a / (common sense: ‘we are in a hurry’). For other detail explanation and more examples see (Yakasai 2005: 11-16). 3.0. Incantation in Hausa Culture “Language is the principal means whereby we conduct our social lives. When it is used in contexts of communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways” (Kramsch 2009: 3). The concept of culture is becoming an important aspect in linguistic and pragmatic studies. Taylor’s (1871) famous definition of culture reads: “Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. Gamble and Gamble (2002: 35) see culture as “a system of know- ledge, beliefs, values, customs, behaviors and artifacts that are ac- quired, shared and used by members during daily living”. Most soci- ologists conceive culture as a design for living. Each culture constitutes a unique lifestyle – a unique combination of values, rules, roles and relationship that provide a guide for socially defined ap- propriate bahaviour (Ogunbameru and Rotimi 2006: 235). It is very clear that culture is an attribute not of individuals per se but of indi- viduals as members of groups, it is learned and transmitted in socie- ty. It is one of the capabilities acquired by man as a member of uploads/Litterature/ incantation-in-hausa-culture-an-example-of-syntactic-reduplication.pdf