School of Languages
Permanent URI for this community
Browse
Browsing School of Languages by Author "Amfo, N.A.A."
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Aspects of the Morphology of C'lela(University of Ghana, 2013-06) Aliero, M.A.; Saah, K.K.; Amfo, N.A.A.; Duthie, A.S.The main goal of this study is to describe the morphological properties of C’lela; a Niger-Congo, Western Kainji language spoken in the eastern part of Kebbi State, Nigeria. The study mainly adopted the classic descriptive model of linguistics in particular to explore and highlight the morphological processes and properties of C’lela. The relevant data for the study were sourced mainly from the extant literature on C’lela as well as the field data. By and large, the primary data were corroborated with the secondary sources. The study established that C’lela has distinctive morphological properties akin to other languages across West Africa. C’lela uses prefixes and suffixes on nominal and verbal categories to provide information about number and tense, and equally undergoes the major morphological processes such as compounding, derivation, affixation, and reduplication. In terms of derivation it was revealed that though derivational processes in C’lela are analyzable mainly on the principles of concatenative morphology where prefixes and suffixes are in concatenative relationship with their host stems, the language also lends itself to non-concatenative morphology, where the internal stem- vowel, instead of affixes, contains the syntactic and semantic information in the derivation. This suggests that C’lela has a derivational system that exploits affixation, as well as internal modification. With regard to compounding, it emerged that C’lela is an endocentric but a left-headed language. It was also realized that the language exhibits both partial and complete reduplications, which in most cases are lexical and semantic in function. It was particularly noted that the complete reduplication of verbs that contain heavy-initial disyllabic stems in C’lela are accompanied by phonological operations such as syllable truncation and imbrication. The study while illustrating the chief morphological processes inherent in C’lela, endeavored to examine and highlight the various phonological processes that are often triggered when stems come into contact with affixes or when compounding and/or reduplication take place. These morphophonological processes include but are not limited to; vowel copying, vowel lengthening, vowel deletion, metathesis, vowel lowering, complementary distribution, syllable truncation, and imbrication.Item Force Dynamics and Causation in Akan(University of Ghana, 2013-06) Duah, R.A.; Osam, E.K.; Saah, K.K.; Amfo, N.A.A.This study investigates the expression of force-dynamics in Akan (Talmy 2000). Two main types of causatives can be found in the language, namely non- periphrastic causatives (lexical causatives and cause-effect SVCs) and periphrastic causatives (analytic causatives). The study examines the syntactic properties of causatives and shows that while lexical causatives and cause-effect SVCs involve a monoclausal structure, the analytic causative displays a complex (bi-clausal) structure. In Akan, the difference in the coding of the causee argument in analytic causatives is neither coincidental nor superficial but points to a difference in syntactic properties and structure. It is argued that the different syntactic marking of the causee argument in Akan causatives is not predicted by a syntactic case hierarchy as claimed by Comrie 1976 neither is it motivated by the degree of agentivity of the causee in the causative interaction as Cole 1983 proposed. Rather, the alternative marking of the causee is as a result of restructuring of a complement causative sentence into a partial lexicalised serial verb construction in the language. Five event types of causation are identified namely, MANIPULATION, CREATE, TRIGGER, PROMPT and ALLOW and their properties analysed through Talmy’s (2000) force-dynamics framework. The notion of direct and indirect causation is also examined in Akan. It is emphasized that, at least in Akan, it is better to map event type of causation with the notion of (in)directness of causation because a single causative expression may involve more than one event type of causation.