GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

ABSTRACT
The internal temporal constituency of events is reflected in the verb element within the
discourse structure of every natural language. This paper described aspectual
distinctions in Gokana within a formal linguistic framework. The study identified sixteen
discrete aspects in Gokana and found that these distinctions can be categorized into
four basic aspects: completive, durative, inceptive and habitual which reflect the
syntactic and semantic properties of aspects as a grammatical category in the
language. The study reported an interaction between tense and aspect, and showed
that four tenses viz simple, past, unfulfilled and future co-occur with each distinct
aspect marked in Gokana. The paper reported that Gokana marks aspectual
distinctions through three different strategies grammaticalization, lexicalization and a
combination of both processes. The paper showed that the grammaticalized markers
always precede the verb within clause structure (except the completive aspect marker)
and are treated as distinct grammatical morphemes and not affixes or clitics. The study
recommended a separate morpho-syntactic analysis of all aspectual markers in the
language.
KEYWORDS: Gokana, Aspects, Aspectual Markers, Tense, Grammaticalization,
Lexicalization, Syntax