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Browsing School of Languages by Subject "Akan"
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Item A Cognitive Semantic Analysis of Perception and Cognition Expressions in Akan(University of Ghana, 2020-07) Eshun, E.S.This study examines linguistic expressions in Mfantse (Akan) that relate to the basic senses of the body such as seeing, tasting, smelling, hearing and touching. For each sense modality, both the literal and metaphorical expressions were investigated. It adopts the cognitive linguistics approach. Data were gathered from forty native speakers of Mfantse (Central region) in a variety of interview formats and elicitation from stimuli. The data gathered confirmed the empirical validity arrived at in the conclusions of the study. A significant finding of the study is that the perceptive verbs (PVs) do not only display physiological roles but also demonstrate diverse extended meanings depending on the context in which they occur. The study illustrates that hwέ (look) involves a durative process. On the other hand, hú (see) is a visual activity that occurs ‘on the spot’ or instantaneously. Sometimes hú can be durative where the visual line is directed towards compassion. Hwέ is volitional while hú is both volitional and non-volitional. These two PVs are classified as: intra-psychological (self-philosophies) and social-psychological experiences (interdependency). The findings from the gustatory expressions show six primary taste sensations in Akan: sweet/pleasant, salty, sour, bitter, congealing, and a semantically derived form, táblábáá (lacking taste; bland), in contrast to the five taste forms in English. The study also revealed that from the ethno-cultural background, dɛ́ẃ ‘sweet/pleasant’ can be described as a pleasant taste that includes: +/- sugariness, and non-food related experiences. Also, Mfantse (Akan) expresses different forms of specific perceived sour taste as: kàẁ, fèm̀and yèrɛ̀yèrɛ̀ẁ. Further, all the taste expressions revealed metaphorical expressions: Pleasant– gentle/good speech, enough money, sexual enjoyment, flattery and pampering. Bland – improper dressing. Sour– regret, disappointment, bad body odour. Bitter – offensive talk, difficulties in life, excessive judgment, and stinginess. Salty – dishonest. Results also show that Mfantse (Akan) profiles different semantic ways of representing and interpreting basic and extended meanings of olfactory, auditory and tactile sensory information. The olfactory sense revealed that m̀fáŕ/ǹká ‘scent’ may be understood to conflate good, bad, fragrant, stench and disapproving concepts in portraying odours. Also, the semantics of ǹká ‘scent’ demonstrates that there are few occurrences where ǹká ‘scent’ does not have a negative connotation. Perhaps the non-negative connotation can be explained in the context where the concept of ǹká ‘scent’ needs to be modified with positive adjectives. For extreme odours, Mfantse (Akan) identified specific terms: sùòǹǹ, kòóò, káńkáń, hùǹtùǹǹ and sùkùsùkù to describe them. Also, bɔ̀ǹ ‘bad odour’ exhibits: bad human body odour, lack of intellectual competencies and general bad odours. The term húáḿ indicate good odours. Additionally, the olfactory experience of hùà ‘to sniff/smell’ coded the sense of relaxation, satisfaction, love of, and to detect preference of the odour of an entity. Metaphorical resource show that olfactory experiences in Mfantse indicate: húáḿ ‘good odour’; ‘good mouth talk’ – ‘good/eloquent speech’; bɔ̀ǹ ‘bad odour’; ‘bad mouth talk’ – loud-mouthed or offensive speech; ‘bad breath/bad smell in the nose’– hostility, unfriendliness; ‘self-matter smells’– bad character. The study identifies two auditory terms: tsè ‘hear’ and tsíè ‘listen’. Semantically, meanings from these two verbs are contextually different, but they have similar syntactic structures in terms of the arguments they select. Extended meanings of the auditory sense display the following: tsìètsíèè ‘to investigate’, tsíè ‘give a hearing’ (legal context), tsíè no ‘agree’/‘permit’; tsíè nó àsò pá mù: ‘listen without prejudice’, tsíè /tsè… àsέḿ ‘obedience’, tsíé…ànó ‘act on hearsay’; à-tsè â ńńtséè: ‘pretence’ and tsè àsó mú: ‘listen to the right information’. Further, the tactile sense employed serial verb construction; kà…hwέ; súóm…hwέ; and míá…hwέ (touch). These constructions engage the hand for examining physical experiences as well as expressing feelings regarding metaphorical expressions such as comforting, subduing, pleasing, loving, stimulating, intimacy and painful expressions. Importantly, the Mfantse data make a contribution towards the concept of perception and cognition predicates normally moving in pairs as state and non-state pairs in Akan. Thus, for the state, we have concrete/non-metaphorical uses and abstract/metaphorical uses for the non-state roles. These play a major role in the range of semantic/pragmatic interpretations that allow for these. It is expected that comparable research will spring up from closely related dialects and in other Ghanaian languages, the Kwa language family as well as African languages in general to bring out similarities and differences in the linguistic analysis of these sensory modalities.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.Item The Phonology of Akan Loanwords in Ga and Dangme(University Of Ghana, 2018-07) Adomako, K.This thesis studies the loanword phonologies of Ga and Dangme (Kwa, Ga-Dangme group) languages. It focuses on investigating how Akan (Kwa, Tano Central group) source words have been phonologically adapted into Ga and Dangme. It has been observed that both Ga and Dangme have borrowed comparatively more Akan words into their vocabularies than Akan has borrowed from Ga and Dangme. However, not much studies have been carried out to establish the nature and extent of borrowings between Akan, on the one hand, and Ga and Dangme, on the other hand. The thesis, therefore, seeks to investigate how the two target languages have adapted some Akan segments, especially non-native segments (both vowels and consonants) into their vocabularies. It also explores how Akan source prosodic features such as syllabic nasals and tone have been realised in the two target languages. The data for this study were collected from the entries in both Ga-English and Dangme-English dictionaries. The study concludes that the phonological adaptations in general are motivated by a combination of phonological and perceptual factors. Phonologically, the adaptations of non-native vocalic and consonantal segments can be accounted for within OT due to the crucial ranking of some markedness constraints. In terms of tone, it has been concluded that the source tone melody is generally preserved in both languages. However, additionally, the same source melodies can be adapted into other melodies present in the targel languages.