CHAPTER ONE
1.0 GENERAL BACKGROUND
This
research work is on the Verb phrase of Kuturmi. Kuturmi is one of the languages
spoken in Kaduna State. It is spoken in Awon and Arikwo. It has two dialect,
Inuwa and Umsuwe which is used in Arikwo and Inuwa is been used in Awon
(district head quarter) Umsuwe is the majority while Inuwa is the minority.
In this
chapter, we shall discuss the historical background, Geographical location
and Socio-linguistics profile of Kuturmi speakers, the genetic
classification of Kuturmi language, Scope and organization of the study,
Justification of the study, Methodology, Data collection, Data Analysis and the
Theoretical frame work.
1.1 GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Kuturmi
land is situated geographically between latitude 9-5 degree North and 10 degree
north and longitude 7.5 degree East and 8.0 degree east. The region lies to the
Western part of Kachia district headquarters. The region is bounded by the
river guinea to the East and South and to the North and West by the Kadara
tribe. It is about 12km from Kachia town.
The vegetation of this Area falls under the guinea savannah type
with prominent feature of fall grasses called elephant grass.
Among the
natural resources of the region are timber, palm produce, trees and some
agricultural products such as ginger, maize, millet, yam, cassava and a host of
others.
1.2 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The history
of Kuturmi people was associated with migration. There exists two sources of
the Kuturmi Origin. One traditional source holds that the Kutumbawa people
captured Kanu empire in the year A.D. 499. Bagauda was said to be a grandson of
Bayajidda the snake killer of Daura.
The second
source which is the Katsina fable, simly puts it that the Kuturmi people
migrated to their present settlement from Kano city in 1807 (Burdon 1969).
The
Kutumbawa people were nicknamed after their occupation “Mortar carving” by
their neighbour the word “Mortar” is Turimi in Hausa, But they later moved from
Kano and by-passed Zaria to the north and Kauru to South and settled at a
village called Kallah in Kajuru district of Kajuru Local Government Area.
1.3 SOCIO-CULTURAL PROFILE
1.3.1 CULTURAL PROFILE
Culture is
a shared learned symbolic of values, beliefs and attitude that shape and
influence perception and behaviour. In Kuturmi land their culture respect the
fact that females should not wear trouser while males should not wear skirts.
Their belief is that men should not wear women clothing while women should also
not wear men’s clothing. Also the longitudinal tribal mark on their cheeks is
an identity to describe the Kutumbawa people.
1.3.2 RELIGION
The
Religion in Kuturmi land before Christianity was around just like other
Nigerian community was essentially traditional, but now they have three
religions namely: Traditional, Christianity and Islam.
1.3.2.1 TRADITION
This
religion embraces a number of beliefs and practices among which he belief in
the supernatural, who is believed to be the architect of their lives. In this
practice, there is the belief of several spirits those that posses powers above
those of ordinary human beings and the constitute power of their own
and live as human beings live, they are commonly known as “Ushara”
and they live in various places like rivers, trees, forest and mountains.
1.3.2.2 CHRISTIANITY
To the
Kuturmi’s God is the creator and controller who have the final authority over
the universe. He (God) is known by the name “UCHE” that is the Supreme Being.
In this Religion, the idea of God is fundamental. They believed in the
existence of the supreme being. The lord of the universe and its creator.
To them he
is the author of all things and the God of all gods “UCHE” is represented by
the Kuturmi’s as being too holy to be approached directly, and so they have
devised other means of approaching him through prayers. In this religion the
people serving God are known as the Christians and goes to church every Sunday
to worship and adore him.
1.3.2.3 ISLAM
In Kuturmi
land, there are no many Muslims in the land, they are not more than 10-20
people in this religion, they also have their own way of praying or approaching
their God, they pray at intervals while on Fridays mainly, they go to the
mosque for their worship service.
1.3.3 FESTIVAL
There also
exist some festivals in Awon, these include, harvest festivals, masquerade
festival and installation of chiefs among others. The harvest festival comes up
whenever new “Accha” (hungry rice) is around, they celebrate it while the
chiefs will pray on it and take it first before any other person can take it.
1.3.4 MARRIAGE RITE
Marriages
in this community were in the olden days the responsibility of the parents. The
parent chooses wives for their son’s right from the day female child is born.
The father or the mother simply ties a small rope around the leg of the baby
indicating his or her willingness to marry her to his or her son, from that
time gift of food stuff will be taken to the girls parent at the end of every
farming season until she grows for marriage age when dowry will be taken to her
parents. The dowry is usually a hen and a pot of local wine (burukutu) the
culture has since given way to the modern methods of marriage as practice use
were in the northern part of the country.
1.3.5 SOCIO-ECONOMIC LIFE
Kuturmi people
lives in traditional mud houses, the houses which was formerly circular in
shapes with thatch roofs had gradually given way to the modern rectangular
houses with corrugated iron sheets. The houses built in clusters belonging to
an extended family. Families were divided or distinguished along the
clandestine lines. The clans were named after occupations or social status of
family like Arikpan (The warriors) ‘Arigumo’ (The ruling clan) ‘Arikma’ (The
blacksmith) and Aritaworo.
1.3.5.1 OCCUPATION
Kuturmi
people’s occupation is majorly farming, they in addition to farming practiced
mortar carving and blacksmith hunting and fishing are practices to their
dishes, farming is carried out in sessions beginning with yam, cocoyam, hungry
rice, guinea corn and millet.
Today,
Kuturmi’s food crops are in commercial quantity for sale to the outside
communities.
1.3.5.2 FOOD
The food
eaten majorly by this people (Kuturmi) is ‘Tuwo and Kalkash soup (okro) they
use Accha in making their Tuwo this days, but before it was guinea corn they
use in making their Tuwo.
1.3.5.3 DRESS
Kuturmi
women dress in ‘Ture’ a piece of cloth of about 1.5 meter long and two inches
wide tied around the waist and upper part of their body (covering the essential
part of them. The young girls use leaves while the men dress in animal skin
which covers just the waist covering their private part. This tradition has
since given to modern way of dressing. The men now dresses simply but
occasionally uses flowing gowns on festivals and Sundays while their women
folks wear wrappers and blouses with head tie to march.
1.3.6 SOCIOLINGUISTIC PROFILE
It
(Kuturmi) is a language of the home, it is not in use in the educational
system, but it is used for communication in the home. While Hausa is the
Language of Education together with English Language. The orthography used in
writing Kuturmi is the Greek-Roman Orthography and not Hausa Orthography.
The
relationship between Hausa and Kuturmi is that, both Hausa and Kuturmi are been
used concurrently, Kuturmi borrowed more of Hausa sounds. In a nutshell we can
say Kuturmi is endangered because Hausa language has dominated it.
1.5 SCOPE AND ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
This work
aims at describing the Verb phrase of Kuturmi language using the Government and
binding theory. The work will describe the various verbs and verb complements
in the language and discuss some transformational processes involved in their
derivation. The scope of this work is therefore essentially the verb phrase in
Kuturmi language.
The research work is divided into five chapters.
Chapter One discusses the general
background to the study, the historical background of the language and people,
their socio-cultural profile, genetic classification of the language, scope and
organization of the study, justification of the study, methodology, collection
and data analysis.
Chapter Two reviews some literature
review to the study, such as phrase structure rules, lexical categories,
sentence types and the verb phrase and its constituents tone and syllable
structure as well as the basic word orders.
Chapter Three deals with the verb
phrase of Kuturmi language, it identifies the verb in the language and
classified them based on their syntactic and semantic functions, the chapter
also discusses the verb phrase in the language together with their components.
Chapter Four focuses on the
transformational processes that are relevant to the derivation of the verb
phrase in the language while Chapter Five summarizes the work,
make the recommendations and concludes the study.
1.5.1 JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY
The study
of Kuturmi language is very important because to the best of our knowledge no
work of this type has been done on it. This work will therefore help in
reserving the language by committing it into writing and providing an
orthography for it. It will also promote future work on this language as the
present work can be used for future research into the language.
1.5.2 METHODLOGY
The
following methodology was adopted in collecting the Data for this long essay.
The Data used in this research work are face to face contact method, using oral
interview and the Ibadan word list of 400 basic items.
Two
literate native speakers of the language were used to collect the Data. Hence,
questions were asked in English language and answers were given in Kuturmi
language.