Published Article

ABSTRACT
The paper described the morphology and semantics of copula verbs in Kana. The analysis was
done utilizing a formal linguistic framework. The paper reported that three morphological
variants of the copula verbs occur in the language: the overt copula, the null copula and the
pseudo copula. The paper found that there are two forms of the overt copula, lu and lè with
complementary syntactic distribution. Lu occurs in predicative constructions while lè occurs in
existential and locative constructions. The paper showed that the null copula occurs in
discourse contexts in which a sentence lacks an overt subject in surface syntax; while the
pseudo copula occurs as a lexical variant of the Kana copula verb. The paper also found that
Kana copula verbs express predicative, locative, existential and equative meanings in discourse
structure. The paper claimed that the locative copula in Kana cannot occur in the progressive
aspect which is a marked contrast to the situation in most Niger-Congo languages as a number
of these languages permits progressivity in locative structures.
KEYWORDS: Kana, Copula, Structure, Morphology, Semantics.