Gur (or Mabia) languages which are spoken in West Africa have so-called internally-headed relative clauses (IHRCs), but they have not received serious attention in syntactic and typological research on IHRCs. In this article, building on detailed first-hand data, we describe the syntax and semantics of IHRCs in five Gur languages: Buli, Dagaare, Dagbani, Gurene, and Kabiyé. It is demonstrated that their IHRCs refute the syntactic and semantic generalizations proposed in the literature (Gorbet 1976;Cole 1987;Grosu 2002;Watanabe 1991;. We also compare IHRCs in Gur and Japanese and argue that the existing semantic typology of IHRCs must be reconsidered, showing that properties of two types of IHRCs-restrictive and maximalizing IHRCS-do not necessarily show predicated correlations.

This article deals with contact phenomena between two languages of distinct branches of Niger-Congo in Lome, Togo. The contact between Kabiye and Ewe has manifested itself in terms of Ewe lexical insertions and borrowings in Kabiye. My study deals specifically with Ewe lexical insertions into Kabiye. The article highlights some aspects of Kabiye grammar, including tone (for marking tense and aspect in verbs), nouns and noun classes, adjectives and predicative adjectives with linking verbs, focus constructions, and serial verbs in the language. I find that, in areas where Kabiye and Ewe grammar are congruent, Ewe insertions are frequently used, with the insertions taking Kabiye morphology. But in areas where the two grammars diverge, insertions are infrequent and those that occur do not take Kabiye morphology.

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In Togo, speakers of Kabiye have been in contact with the speakers of Ewe for several decades due to migration. As a result of this language contact, many members of the Kabiye speech community have become bilingual in Kabiye and Ewe. There have been a number of claims that Kabiye “est une langue en péril” (Aritiba 1993: 11). These claims have been based mainly on the observation of Kabiye speakers in Lomé and other major cities, where younger speakers seem to be losing their mother tongue to the benefit of Ewe. However, the extent of the loss of Kabiye is not well known because no extensive sociolinguistic study has been carried out among Kabiye speakers in these areas, and more specifically, in major Kabiye-speaking areas. The current study which has been carried out in Kara, the major Kabiye-speaking city and Awidina, a Kabiye village of the prefecture of Kara, fills the gap. The paper examines Kabiye speakers' reports of patterns of language use in these areas of the Kabiye community.