Indefiniteness Marking and Akan bi

Abstract

This paper examines the communicative role of the Akan (Kwa, Niger-Congo) existential quantifier bi both as a determiner and as a pronominal. In aiding the addressee to arrive at the intended interpretation of the utterance in which it occurs, determiner bí provides the procedural information that the addressee should construe bí as an existential quantifier that quantifies over tokens belonging to the type of entity expressed by the preceding nominal. In resolving the referent of pronominal bì, the addressee construes bì as an existential quantifier that quantifies over tokens belonging to the type of entity the antecedent expresses. When the definiteness marker no (the) precedes bí in a single noun phrase, the intended referent of that noun phrase is ‘a part, or member, of the whole’ or ‘one of this sort’. On the other hand, when bí follows no the noun phrase is to be understood as an echoic metarepresentation of an earlier mentioned noun phrase. Thus the syntactic configuration and the nature of the rightmost marker define the sequence as grammatically definite or not.