Browsing by Author "Adjei, F.A."
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Learning to Express Motion Events in Ewe(University of Ghana, 2013-07) Adjei, F.A.; Saah, K.K.; Anyidoho, A.; Amuzu, E.K.The focus of this thesis is to examine Ewe speakers’ linguistic organization of motion events and how such language patterns develop in Ewe- speaking children. The work is situated within Talmy’s Theory of Lexicalization Patterns (which examines the conceptual structure of motion events as well as the typological patterns in which this conceptual structure is parceled out in languages), Slobin’s Thinking-for-Speaking Hypothesis (which explores how particular typological properties will lead Ewe children to learn a particular way of thinking-for-speaking) and the Cognitive and Language-Specific Hypotheses. The cognitive hypothesis claims that children come to the task of language learning with a pre-existent cognitive representation of the world. In contrast, the Language-specific hypothesis claims that the language learning process is often under the semantic structure of the input language and that such influence begins from the very beginnings of language acquisition. Elicited production tasks with fifty 3-, 4-, 5-, 7- and 9 year olds (10 participants in each age group) as well as a group of 10 adults were carried out using three elicitation tools developed for research into motion expression. Findings of the study support the claim that typological properties constrain how speakers of Ewe talk about motion from early acquisition phases to adulthood. At age three, Ewe-speaking children used more path verbs than manner verbs in the expression of motion events. From four years onwards, they used the typical SVC constructions, a combination of Manner and Path verbs, to express motion events. They also mentioned only one piece of information about ground of movement in individual clauses. The children neither showed any ability at describing the physical setting in which movement takes place (until 9 years of age) nor fully develop the narrative habit of describing complex motion events. Ewe-speaking children’s performance in motion event description has been found to grow gradually with increasing age and adult performance is always more extensive than that of children at any age. These results also suggest that while Ewe children follow equipollently-framed structural pattern when talking about motion events at a tender age of three, equipollently-framed discourse characteristics in Ewe-speaking children do not achieve maturity until adulthood. The thesis provides evidence for some possible early cognitive tendencies and the place of language specific hypothesis in language development. It also lends support to the typological categorization of Ewe within the Talmian and Slobin’s frameworks which can be used in other comparative studies in future research.Item Migrating from user fees to social health insurance: exploring the prospects and challenges for hospital management(2012-06-22) Atinga, R.A.; Mensah, S.A.; Asenso-Boadi, F.; Adjei, F.A.AbstractBackgroundIn 2003 Ghana introduced a social health insurance scheme which resulted in the separation of purchasing of health services by the health insurance authority on the one hand and the provision of health services by hospitals at the other side of the spectrum. This separation has a lot of implications for managing accredited hospitals. This paper examines whether decoupling purchasing and service provision translate into opportunities or challenges in the management of accredited hospitals.MethodsA qualitative exploratory study of 15 accredited district hospitals were selected from five of Ghana’s ten administrative regions for the study. A semi-structured interview guide was designed to solicit information from key informants, Health Service Administrators, Pharmacists, Accountants and Scheme Managers of the hospitals studied. Data was analysed thematically.ResultsThe results showed that under the health insurance scheme, hospitals are better-off in terms of cash flow and adequate stock levels of drugs. Adequate stock of non-drugs under the scheme was reportedly intermittent. The major challenges confronting the hospitals were identified as weak purchasing power due to low tariffs, non computerisation of claims processing, unpredictable payment pattern, poor gate-keeping systems, lack of logistics and other new and emerging challenges relating to moral hazards and the use of false identity cards under pretence for medical care.ConclusionStudy’s findings have a lot of policy implications for proper management of hospitals. The findings suggest rationalisation of the current tariff structure, the application of contract based payment system to inject efficiency into hospitals management and piloting facility based vetting systems to offset vetting loads of the insurance authority. Proper gate-keeping mechanisms are also needed to curtail the phenomenon of moral hazard and false documentation.