The Morphosemantics of –Ni And –Foɔ Nouns in Akan

Abstract

This study aimed to establish the principles that motivate the formation of –ni and –fo nouns in Akan, as an alternative to previous accounts on the subject. Our primary objective was to examine the contributions –ni, -fo, prefixes and other key morphological units (i.e., bases) make, both structurally and semantically/functionally, towards the formation of –ni and –fo nouns in Akan, assuming principles of Lieber’s (2004) Lexical Semantic Model, which is decompositional in its approach to lexical analysis. From the current study, a base performs one of two functions in a morphological context. That is, it either denotes a collective (i.e., social) attribute, or an individual (human) attribute. -ni strictly references a member of a collective social unit. The morpheme –fo has two basic functional uses depending on the morphological context as indicated below. (a) When -fo is augmented on nominal and adjectival bases, it presents them as collective social attributes; and in this usage presents its (i.e., -fo’s) referents as members of the collectivity that these attributes connote in the real world. (b) -fo is attached to a verbal base to qualify it (i.e., the verbal attribute) as an individual human/personal attribute. Number (i.e., singularity and plurality) here is signaled by prefixes, ↄ- for the singular noun and a- for the plural. Where a verbal base has additionally achieved a collective reference, the singular is either realized with a -fo final, or a -ni final, and there is a single, lexically ambiguous plural form for the two singular forms.