The morphopragmatics of the diminutive morpheme (-ba/-wa) in Akan

Abstract

The present paper is concerned with the diminutive morpheme -wa/-ba in Akan. We examine the form of the diminutive, its origin and the various meanings associated with diminutive forms in the language. We attribute the origin of the diminutive to the lexical word for ‘child/offspring’ ba, basing our argument on language internal evidence as well as cross-linguistic generalizations. The identified meanings of the Akan diminutive are as follows: small, young/offspring, feminine, member, insignificant/nonserious, affection/admiration and contempt/disdain. Having identified the basic meaning of the diminutive as ‘small’, Jurafsky’s (1996) Radial Category theory provides us with a basis to adequately account for the various levels of meanings; drawing a link through metaphors and inferences between the diachronic as well as the synchronic meanings.