FOCUS CONSTRUCTIONS IN ƆKERE BY DIANA SAVALA ANIMAH 10163612 THIS THESIS IS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF GHANA, LEGON IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF MP.HIL LINGUISTICS DEGREE. JULY 2015 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh i DECLARATION I declare that except for the references to works which have been duly cited, this thesis is a result of my original research, under the supervision of Professor Kofi K. Saah and Dr. Clement K. I. Appah, and that it has neither in whole nor in part been presented for another degree elsewhere. ……………………………… ……………… DIANA SAVALA ANIMAH DATE CANDIDATE ……………………………… ……………… PROF. KOFI K. SAAH DATE SUPERVISOR ……………………………….. ……………… DR. CLEMENT K. I. APPAH DATE SUPERVISOR University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh ii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to the Glory of God. To Sisi, Me na, mo ne adwuma! Papa Akpe lo! And To My siblings For being there for me. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank the Almighty God for His love and mercies and for making me live to see the realization of my dream. I am also grateful to all those without whom this dream would not have been a reality. It has been very wonderful working with Prof. Kofi Korankye Saah and Dr. Clement Kwamina Insaidoo Appah as my supervisors. Your dedication, patience, encouragement and invaluable contributions have put this thesis in shape. I would always want to have you as my supervisors if I am given another opportunity. May God richly bless you and grant your heart desires. I also wish to thank all the lecturers in the Linguistics Department, Prof. Nana Aba Amfo (former Head of Department and current Dean of the School of Languages), Professors Kofi Agyekum and Akosua Anyidoho, Doctors Paul Agbedor, George Akanlig Pare, Evershed K. Amuzu (Head of Department), Rev. Alex Dzameshie, Fusheini Hudu, Grace Diabah, J.T. Agor, J. N. Sanchi, Mercy Bobuafor and also Dr. Kofi Dovlo of the Language Centre and all workers in the department for your contributions. My next gratitude goes to my Language Consultants, Mrs Ophelia Larbi, Ankobea Budu-Larbi, Mr A. O. Larbi and Mr Seth Ofosu for your unfailing assistance. To all my course mates, Rachel, Elaine, Antoinette, Yvonne, Reverend, Linda, Augustina, Obed, Debby and Philip, I enjoyed every moment I spent with you. Thank you for the company and support. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh iv I wish to appreciate Mr. Lawrence A. Nkansah, Mr. Stephen Aboagye, Mr. M.K. Fosu, Mr. F.O. Wilson and Mrs Regina Safo for the care and support you showed me throughout the period of my study. Finally, I express my gratitude to my family, friends and all my loved ones for the care and support you have shown me till now. God richly bless each and every one of you. “Quand je vois la bonté de mon Dieu brille sur le toile de ma maison, mon âme béni le Segneur.” University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh v ABSTRACT Focus construction, as a way of presenting new information, is one of the essentials in language. This work is a descriptive study of the phenomenon of focus in Ɔkere, a hill Guan language spoken at Akuapem. Investigating the strategies involved in focus construction in the language, it is observed that Ɔkere marks focus lexically and syntactically. The morpheme ne is used to mark focus. Other morphemes named Weakly Emphatic Morphemes that are used to signal information are also identified. They are nso, mpo, ako, ara and koraa. Major syntactic categories are fronted for focus in Ɔkere. Content question words can also be fronted. It is realised that noun phrases, nominalised verbs, predicative adjectives, temporal and locative adverbs can be fronted for focus. Another major finding is that animate NPs do not leave gaps when they are fronted for focus. However, fronted inanimate NPs do. The gap left behind by the fronted animate NP is filled with a resumptive pronoun that refers back to it. The pragmatic properties of the focus marker and the focused elements are investigated in this thesis. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1 - First Person 2 - Second person 3 - Third person ACC - Accusative Case AG - Agentive ATR - Advanced Tongue Root C - Consonant COP - Copular COMPL - Completive Aspect CONN - Connective COND - Conditional marker CONT - Continuative Aspect DEF - Definite Determiner DEM - Demonstrative EXC - Exclamation FOC - Focus Marker FUT - Future HAB - Habitual Aspect INDEF - Indefinite Determiner IA - Information Alert L1 - First Language NEG - Negative NOM - Nominative Case University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh vii NOML - Nominalizer NP - Noun Phrase OBJ - Object PERF - Perfective Aspect PERS - Person PL - Plural POSS - Possessive Adjective POSTP - Postposition PROG - Progressive Aspect PST - Past Tense SG - Singular SUBJ - Subject SUBC - Subordinating Conjunction QP - Question Particle V - Vowel University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh viii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ................................................................................................. i DEDICATION .................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................... v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................... vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................ viii LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................... xiii LIST OF FIGURES/DIAGRAMS ................................................................... xiii CHAPTER ONE: GENERAL INTRODUCTION ............................................ 1 1.0 Background of the Study .................................................................. 1 1.1 The Notion of Focus .................................................................................. 1 1.2 Ɔkere and its speakers ...................................................................... 2 1.2.1 The Ɔkere People ......................................................................... 2 1.2.2 The Ɔkere Language ..................................................................... 4 1.2.3 The genetic classification of Ɔkere............................................... 5 1.3 Statement of the problem .................................................................. 7 1.4 Objectives of the Study ..................................................................... 8 1.5 Research Questions .......................................................................... 9 1.6 Scope of the study ............................................................................. 9 1.7 Significance of the study ................................................................... 9 1.8 Methodology ................................................................................... 10 1.8.1 Research location ............................................................................ 10 1.8.2 Sources and method of data collection ........................................... 11 1.8.3 Sample size ................................................................................. 11 1.8.4 Data analysis ................................................................................ 12 1.9 Organization of the Thesis ............................................................. 12 1.10 Summary ......................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................... 14 2.0 Review of related literature ............................................................ 14 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh ix 2.1 Definition of focus .......................................................................... 14 2.2 Focus marking strategies ............................................................... 16 2.3 Types of focus ................................................................................. 22 2.4 Focused elements ........................................................................... 23 2.5 Syntactic position of focused elements ........................................... 23 2.6 Pragmatic properties ...................................................................... 26 CHAPTER THREE: A SKETCH GRAMMAR ............................................. 30 3.0 The Structure of the Language ...................................................... 30 3.1 The phonology of Ɔkere ................................................................. 30 3.1.1 Ɔkere Sound System ..................................................................... 30 3.1.2 Ɔkere Consonants .......................................................................... 31 3.1.3 Ɔkere Vowels .......................................................................... 32 3.1.4 Vowel Harmony ......................................................................... 33 3.1.4.1 Exceptions to VH rules .......................................................... 35 3.1.5 Tone in Ɔkere ................................................................................ 36 3.2 The morphology of Ɔkere ............................................................... 37 3.2.1 The Ɔkere noun word ................................................................. 37 3.2.1.1 The nominal prefixes ............................................................... 38 3.2.1.2 Nominal suffixes .................................................................. 40 3.2.2 The Ɔkere verb word ................................................................. 42 3.2.2.1 Semantic Classification of the Ɔkere verb word ................ 42 3.2.2.1.1 Classification of the Ɔkere verb word based on what they express ................................................................................................ 42 3.2.2.1.2 Classification of verbs based on transitivity ....................... 44 3.2.2.1.2.1 Intransitive verbs ........................................................... 44 3.2.2.1.2.2 Transitive verbs ............................................................ 45 3.2.2.1.2.3 Ditransitive verbs ........................................................ 45 3.2.2.1 Morphology of the verb word ........................................... 46 3.2.2.1.1 Pronominalization ............................................................ 46 3.2.2.1.2 Tense and Aspect ............................................................ 49 3.2.2.1.2.1 Completive ................................................................... 50 3.2.2.1.2.2 Future ........................................................................... 51 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh x 3.2.2.1.2.3 Habitual ........................................................................ 51 3.2.2.1.2.4 Progressive .................................................................... 52 3.2.2.1.2.5 Prospective .................................................................. 53 3.2.2.1.2.6 Perfect ........................................................................... 53 3.2.2.1.2.7 Continuative ................................................................. 53 3.2.2.1.3 Mood ............................................................................... 54 3.2.2.1.4 Negation .............................................................................. 55 3.2.3 Adjectives ................................................................................... 56 3.2.4 Adverbs ....................................................................................... 58 3.2.4.1 Manner adverbials ............................................................... 59 3.2.4.2 Temporal/time adverbials .................................................... 59 3.2.4.3 Locative/place adverbs ....................................................... 60 3.3 The Syntax of Ɔkere ........................................................................ 61 3.3.1 Sentence Structure in Ɔkere.................................................... 61 3.4 Summary ......................................................................................... 63 CHAPTER FOUR: FOCUSED ELEMENTS IN ƆKERE .............................. 64 4.0 Introduction .................................................................................... 64 4.1 Focus strategies in Ɔkere ............................................................... 64 4.1.1 Lexical/syntactic focus marking ................................................. 64 4.1.2 Cleft construction ............................................................................. 66 4.2 Types of Focus Structures in Ɔkere ................................................ 70 4.2.1 Argument focus .............................................................................. 70 4.2.2 Subject focus ............................................................................... 70 4.2.3 Object focus ................................................................................ 72 4.3 Predicate focus (Nominalized Verb focus) ........................................... 75 4.4 Adverb focus .......................................................................................... 77 4.5 Adjective focus ................................................................................ 80 4.6 Focus marking and content questions ............................................ 81 4.7 Focus and resumptive pronouns .................................................... 88 4.7.1 Object focus and resumptive pronouns ........................................ 89 4.7.2 Content questions and resumptive pronouns .............................. 92 4.8 Other focus markers - Weakly emphatic morphemes ..................... 93 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh xi 4.8.1 The additive marker nso ............................................................. 94 4.8.2 The scalar marker mpo ............................................................... 94 4.8.3 The marker ara ............................................................................ 95 4.8.4 The marker ako .......................................................................... 96 4.9 Weakly emphatic morphemes with the focus marker ne................. 96 4.10 Summary ......................................................................................... 98 CHAPTER FIVE: THE PRAGMATIC PROPERTIES OF FOCUS IN ƆKERE ........................................................................................................................ 100 5.0 Introduction .................................................................................. 100 5.1 The pragmatics of the focus marker ne ........................................ 101 5.1.1 The completive function of Ɔkere ne. ..................................... 102 5.1.2 The focus marker ne as a selective marker ............................... 104 5.1.3 The replacing function of ne ..................................................... 105 5.2 The pragmatics of ako .................................................................. 107 5.3 The pragmatics of ara .................................................................. 109 5.3.1 The simultaneous use of ara ..................................................... 110 5.3.2 The temporal contiguity interpretation of ara .......................... 110 5.3.3 The continuity interpretation of ara .......................................... 111 5.3.4 The restrictive interpretation of ara .......................................... 112 5.3.5 Ara as a scalar marker.............................................................. 113 5.4 The pragmatics of the additive marker nso .................................. 114 5.5 The scalar marker mpo ................................................................ 115 5.6 The scalar function of koraa ............................................................... 118 5.6.1 Koraa with other weakly emphatic morphemes ....................... 119 5.7 The Pragmatics of some Focused Elements ................................. 121 5.7.1 The pragmatics of focused NPs .................................................... 121 5.7.2 The pragmatics of focused adverbs and adjectives ...................... 122 5.7.3 The pragmatics of nominalised verb fronting ........................... 123 4.8 The Pragmatics of Content Questions .......................................... 124 5.9 The morpheme le .......................................................................... 126 5.10 Summary ....................................................................................... 128 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION .................................................................. 130 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh xii 6.0 Introduction .................................................................................. 130 6.1 Summary of chapters .................................................................... 130 6.2 Summary of Findings ................................................................... 133 6.3 Recommendations ......................................................................... 135 6.4 Conclusion .................................................................................... 135 REFERENCES ............................................................................................... 136 APPENDIX .................................................................................................... 143 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh xiii LIST OF TABLES Table 1 : Consonants of Guan Languages Table 2 : Ɔkere Consonants Table 3 : /ʨ/ and /ts/ as variants in Ɔkere Table 4 : Words with their oral and nasal counterparts Table 5 : Vowel harmony sets in Ɔkere Table 6 : Ɔkere personal pornouns LIST OF FIGURES/DIAGRAMS Figure 1: Ɔkere language family tree Figure 2: Language map of Ghana Figure 3: Ɔkere vowel chart University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 1 CHAPTER ONE GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1.0 Background of the Study This thesis is about focus constructions in Ɔkere. It deals with focus strategies, the elements that can be focused as well as the pragmatic import of the various strategies and the specific focus elements. In this chapter, I am going to briefly introduce the notion of focus (section 1.1). I then introduce the Ɔkere language, presenting its speakers and where it is spoken (section 1.2). I will also present the problem statement (section 1.3), objectives of the study (section 1.4), research questions (section 1.5), the scope of the study (section 1.6), the significance of the study (section 1.7) and the methodology (1.8). This thesis will be descriptive in approach, not adopting any specific formal framework. Thus, the thesis shares the view (Haspelmath 2008, and Dryer 2006) that every language needs to be described in its own terms. 1.1 The Notion of Focus What happens in a discourse is that, a hearer assumes that an utterance will be structured such that they will be able to differentiate between ‘new’ and ‘old’ information. Van Valin and Lapolla (1997) call this arrangement of information in an utterance ‘Information Structure.’ Information structure is the way and manner in which one tries to put new information across. According to Van Valin and Lapolla (1997:199), if an addressee is not able to identify the ‘proper context’ of an utterance, understanding becomes difficult. This is because an utterance is made with the aim of conveying a University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 2 message to the addressee and context makes understanding easier in an interaction. Information structure differs from one language to another. That is, every language has a way of presenting new information in a discourse. Focus can be described as an important piece of new information that is presented in an utterance or a sentence. A speaker’s intention in such cases is to convey new information in an utterance. The concept of focus as described by Lambrecht (1994) is that in an utterance, we can identify the element of shared and not-yet-shared knowledge which differ from each other. The focused element which is the new information is described as the ‘presupposition of a sentence’ (Lambrecht 1994:207). The ‘presupposition of a sentence’ is expected to be shared by the speaker and the addressee. Focus construction is one way of structuring information in a discourse. Almost all languages employ focus strategies, a category of information structure, to present new information in an interaction. 1.2 Ɔkere and its speakers In this section, I present a brief historical background of the people of Ɔkere and their language. 1.2.1 The Ɔkere People Ɔkere is a Guan word which means ‘binding’ or ‘fastening’. Ɔkere comes from the verb kere ‘to tie’. The people see themselves as a group that is united and what binds them together seems to be the language. The prefix Ɔ nominalises the verb kere hence the noun Ɔkere. The name was changed to Kyerepong by the people of Akwamu under the leadership of Ansah Sasraku who maltreated University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 3 the people of Ɔkere when they (Akwamu) ruled the Guan communities. For this reason, non-natives refer to both the language and the people as Kyerepong. The Akwamu rule that led to the change of name from Ɔkere to Kyerepong is believed to be one of the saddest legacies of the people of Akwamu (Opare 2004). Before migrating to their present location, the people of Ɔkere lived in the southern part of the Akuapem Hills. According to Opare (2004:39), the Hill Guan speaking communities claim that their ancestors were the first to settle in the Akuapem Hills. They found an uninhabited place, decided to settle there, and called themselves Ɔkere Kponkpo ‘Great Ɔkere’. The uninhabited place where they first settled is now Adukrom which is the paramouncy of the seven Ɔkere speaking towns. Mamfe, Mampong, Obosomase and Tutu (speakers of Akuapem) were formerly speakers of Guan. They now speak Akuapem as a result of the rule of the Akwamu. During the Akwamu rule, Ansah Sasraku, the Akwamuhene, stationed ambassadors in all the towns and their job was mainly to prevent the people from speaking their own language. They had to speak a language that the Akwamus understood. Ansah Sasraku named the people ‘Nkoa-apem’ ‘Thousand Slaves’ (Opare 2004:40). This name was later changed to Akuapem which is used presently. Farming is the main occupation in the Ɔkere communities. They cultivate maize, cassava, yam, cocoyam and plantain as main crops. Trading of all sorts of items has also taken root in the communities. Formerly, the men also engaged in hunting (Opare 2004:24). University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 4 ‘Eba’ also known as ‘Ohum’ was the main festival of the Hill Guan in Akuapem. ‘Odwira’ was later introduced to the Guans as a result of the Akwamu rule. This, according to Opare (2004), is part of the ‘Akanisation’ of Ɔkere. The change was another blow to the Hill Guan of Akuapem because they cherished their festival so much. They never liked the idea because Odwira involves purification, among other common rituals such as remembrance, thanksgiving and harvest. This is because even though they share most of these rituals, Odwira is mainly concerned with the purification of stools. ‘Eba’ is not concerned with stools since the Guans had no chief and therefore had nothing to do with chieftaincy or stools. Unlike ‘Odwira’, ‘Eba’ is a festival connected with the fetish house or shrine because the Guans worshiped gods. Today, idol worship is not much among the Ɔkere communities; Christianity is highly patronized by the people. One indigenous system which was maintained in the Ɔkere communities, and which they still remain proud of, is their system of inheritance. In spite of the harsh Akwamu rule, they maintained their patrilineal system of inheritance, though their rulers inherited through matrilineal lines. 1.2.2 The Ɔkere Language The Ɔkere language is one of the southern Guan languages. It is a Kwa language that belongs to the Volta Comoe family, spoken on the hills of Akuapem. It is spoken among the people of Abiriw, Dawu, Awukugua, Adukrom and Apirede (Dakubu 1988:77). It is also spoken by the people of Aseseεso and Abonse which are located just below the hills of in the northern part of Akuapem and are close to the five Ɔkere speaking towns. It is mainly University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 5 the first language of the people in all of these towns. All of these towns are located in the Akuapem-North District in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The language seems to be influenced by Akan, particularly the Akuapem dialect as a result of location of the speakers. According to the 2010 Population and Housing Census, the district has a population of 136,483 which includes Ɔkere natives. Even though the exact number of Ɔkere speakers is not indicated in the study, they are quite a number. Hence a new constituency has been created called Ɔkere constituency. It must be noted that many of the native speakers of Ɔkere live outside the Ɔkere communities for various reasons including economical and educational pursuits. 1.2.3 The genetic classification of Ɔkere According to Dakubu (1988:77), Painter (1967) classifies Guan languages into four main groups. They are Northern Guan, (Gonja, Nawuri, Choroba, Gichode, Ginyanga, Nchumburu, Krachi, Yeji, Prang, Dwang, Ewoase and Bassa), southern Guan (Nkonya), Hill Guan (Larteh, Kyerepong and Anum (Gua)) and Coastal Guan (Awutu and Efutu). This is shown in figure 1, adopted from Obiri (2013); the language family tree and the language map, adopted from Lewis et al (2013). Area numbered 68 on figure 2 is the language area of Ɔkere (Cherepon/Kyerepong). Ɔkere, as noted earlier is one of the Guan languages that have received very little research attention. It has been observed that speakers of the language speak Akuapem in public places. Pupils even speak Akuapem in schools located in Ɔkere speaking communities. Since it has very few written University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 6 documents, Akuapem is rather taught as the indigenous Ghanaian language in their schools. This is as a result of the fact that the Ɔkere communities are situated close to the Akuapems. Volta Comoe Guan Northern Guan Nkonya Hill Guan Coastal Guan Larteh (lεtε) Kyerepong(Ɔkere) Anum (Gua/Anum Boso) Anum Boso Figure 1: Ɔkere Language Family Tree Akuapem Twi is also used in trading in the area. Until 1994, when a fight ensued between Akropong and Abiriw, the two towns used to share a common market and the lingua franca was Akuapem. This confirms Dakubu’s assertion that “Akan is used in schools, churches and for trade in Guan language areas” (Dakubu 1988:53). Ɔkere speakers are thus highly bilingual. Almost all of them have acquired Akuapem as a second Ghanaian language (for other inhabitants, it is even their L1). With Akuapem Twi, Ɔkere speakers are able to communicate easily with Akuapems but the Akuapems do not in many cases endeavour to learn Ɔkere. Some dialectal differences have been observed in the various Ɔkere speaking communities, however, the Abiriw and Adukrom dialect will be used for the purpose of this study. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 7 Figure 2: Language map of Ghana (Adopted from Lewis et al. 2013) 1.3 Statement of the problem Many aspects of the grammar of Ɔkere and some other Guan languages have not been studied and the way information is packaged by means of focus in discourse is no exception. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 8 Painter (1970) does a phonological description of Gonja and also studies some aspects of the grammar of the language but does not consider focus as part of his studies. Akrofi-Ansah (2002, 2010) has also studied the phonology and some aspects of the grammar of Lateh (Lεtε). She touches on just an aspect of focus in the language and does not discuss it in detail. Asamoah (2006) looks at the classification of some verbs in Anum (Gua). His classification includes verbs that express emotion, rest, affect and attention. Asante (2009) examines the phonology of Nkonya. Recently, works on some aspects of the phonology of Gua and the syntax of Efutu have been done by Obiri-Yeboah (2013) and Cobbina (2013) respectively. The foregoing suggests that some endangered Guan languages specifically, Gonja, Lateh (Lεtε), Efutu, Nkonya and Gua (Anum) have received some attention. Some works that have been done on Ɔkere include Bramson (1981). She studied the varieties of the Kyerepong spoken in Abiriw/Dawu and Apiredi. Adu (1996) has written a primer titled Nanyiɛ Budu ‘Grandfather Budu’. There are also manuscripts written by linguists like Sulemana (2011) and Collins (2011). They present sketched of the phonology and Tense and Aspect respectively. They studied some aspects of the phonology and grammar of Ɔkere. However, these works did either very little or nothing at all on focus construction, which is the focus of this study. 1.4 Objectives of the Study The singular purpose of this study is to investigate the various strategies used to mark focus in Ɔkere. The specific objectives of this study are to: University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 9 i. identify focus marker(s) in Ɔkere ii. describe the syntactic distribution of the focus marker(s) iii. investigate the various focus strategies employed in the language iv. assess the various constituents that can be focused v. describe the pragmatic properties of the focus marker(s) 1.5 Research Questions The following research questions will guide the study: a. What is/are the focus marker(s) in Ɔkere? b. What is the syntactic distribution of Ɔkere focus markers? c. What are the focus strategies employed in Ɔkere? d. What constituents can be focused in Ɔkere? e. What are the pragmatic properties of Ɔkere focus marker(s)? 1.6 Scope of the study Even though Ɔkere is one of the languages that have not received much attention in terms of studies; this research will not consider too many aspects of grammar for studies. Information structure is one of the essentials of the grammar of a language. This study seeks to investigate focus as a strategy for packaging information structure in Ɔkere. 1.7 Significance of the study This work, upon completion, will first of all add to knowledge, in that it will add to existing literature on Guan languages. It will also serve as the basis for further work on Ɔkere since it will serve as a reference document. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 10 1.8 Methodology In this section I will mention the research location and the reason for the choice. The section will also look at the sources and method of data collection, the sample size and data analysis. 1.8.1 Research location Abiriw and Adukrom towns located in the Ɔkere speaking community were selected for the study. Abiriw and Adukrom were selected because they are part of the indigenous Ɔkere speaking communities. The choice of Adukrom is mainly because it is the paramouncy of Ɔkere and that is where the people of Ɔkere first settled and so the researcher thinks it has a good representation of Ɔkere. Abiriw is also located close to Akropong and the researcher wants to see if there is any Akan influence on information packaging in the language. Another reason for the selection of these communities is the dialectal differences that were realised in the course of collecting the preliminary data. It was realised that Abiriw and Adukrom have almost the same variety while Abonse has a different variety. For instance the verb ‘to look’ is pronounced in Abiriw and Adukrom as kye / ʨɪ / while it is pronounced ke /kɪ/ in Abonse. The noun abobi is also used in Abonse to refer to ‘bird’ while it refers to ‘insect’ in Abiriw. For the sake of consistency, the researcher thought it wise to select Abiriw and Adukrom out of the seven Ɔkere speaking towns. Authentic data is assured since native speakers are involved. Adu’s (1996) primer, ‘Nanyiɛ Budu’ and manuscripts by Sulemana (2011) and Collins (2011) will also be consulted as secondary source of data. The primer and the manuscripts are written documents in Ɔkere. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 11 1.8.2 Sources and method of data collection Primary data was used in this research. Data was gathered through elicitation. There were four means by which elicitation was done. Respondents were made to describe pictures in books written in another language (Ga) apart from Akan, and English. In order to prevent them from trying to read the researcher covered the writings in the books before giving them out for description. Respondents were also made to describe the processes involved in preparing some items that are common in the area. In the course of describing, other respondents who have no knowledge about the process involved in the preparation of a particular item were allowed to ask questions just to aid the researcher in the extraction of focused elements. Respondents were also made to tell stories, including their migration story. Finally, respondents were made to discuss a few topical issues and their daily routines. The researcher recorded all the events and some conversations among the respondents. The recordings were transcribed later with the help of two language consultant. Tones were marked where necessary. 1.8.3 Sample size Ten respondents were selected for the research. Two (male and female) out of the ten respondents served as language consultants who helped the researcher to transcribe the recorded data and also help clarify issues when the researcher was in doubt. Five (5) came from each of the towns. They were made up of five (5) males and five (5) females in order to avoid gender bias. Educational background was considered in the selection of the respondents. Among them were five (5) educated, at least with a first degree University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 12 and five (5) semi educated at most with basic education. The age range of the respondents is between eighteen and sixty years. This was done to see how each of the groups uses the language. 1.8.4 Data analysis The data was analysed descriptively. That is, the transcribed data was glossed interlineally and described accordingly. The various focus structures were identified from the data gathered and described accordingly. 1.9 Organization of the Thesis This study will be divided into six chapters. Chapter one presents the background of the study, Ɔkere and its speakers, problem statement, objectives, research questions, scope of the study, significance of the study and methodology. Chapter two deals with the literature review. Chapter three focuses on the sketch grammar. Here the structure of the language is explored. The aspects dealt with include the sound system, the Ɔkere noun word and the Ɔkere verb word. Adjectives and adverbs are discussed briefly. In chapter four, I discuss the syntactic distribution of the focus marker. I also discuss the syntactic categories that are focused and the focus strategies. The weakly emphatic morphemes are also studied in chapter four. In chapter five, I discuss the pragmatic properties of the focus marker and the weakly emphatic morphemes. Finally, chapter six sums up and concludes the study. It also covers recommendations for further studies in the language. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 13 1.10 Summary This chapter looked at the background of the study which includes the notion of focus. It was observed that focus is done in line with Lambrecht’s (1994) concept of focus which shows that focus is ‘an element of shared and not-yet- shared knowledge’. The not-yet-shared knowledge is supposed to be shared by the speaker and the hearer. The focused element is also seen as new information that is presented as a presupposition in a sentence. The background of the people and the language Ɔkere with its genetic classification was studied. The chapter also looked at the problem statement, objectives of the study, research questions, the scope of the study and the significance of the study. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 14 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW 2.0 Review of related literature This chapter will look at the review of related literature. This will be done under the following headings: the definition of focus, focus marking strategies, types of focus, focused elements, the syntactic position of focused elements and the pragmatic properties of focus. 2.1 Definition of focus There are various definitions of focus in the literature, depending on how the author in question sees the construction of focus in the language being studied. Boadi (1974) sees focus as a way of presenting new information and also showing prominence in a discourse. He notes that “focus marking, a linguistic feature, is not the only way to achieve emphasis but then paralinguistic features like gestures can be employed to achieve emphasis” (Boadi, 1974:5). According to Halliday (1967:204), “[i]nformation focus is one kind of emphasis, whereby the speaker marks out a part (which may be the whole) of a message block at that which he wishes to be interpreted as informative.” What is presented as informative is a message which the speaker tries to put across to the addressee and it is always seen as new information in a discourse. Dik (1978:19) cited in Ameka (1992:02) agrees with Boadi (1974) as he asserts that “[t]he focus is representing relatively the most important or salient information in the given setting”. In this regard, one would say, how salient or important the information is, depends on the context of the utterance. In other University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 15 words, the prominence of the message that is being put across is dependent on the context. Lambrecht (1994:207) defines focus as “that portion of a proposition which cannot be taken for granted at the time of speech”. He sees it as what makes an utterance an assertion and adds that “it is the unpredictable or pragmatically non-recoverable element in an utterance”. Ameka (1992:02) compares Halliday’s (1967) and Callow’s (1974) definitions of focus and concludes that even though the two agree that there is prominence and emphasis in focus marking, Callow makes a distinction between focus and emphasis whereas Halliday puts the two together. This is as a result of Callow’s (1974:52) assertion that “…prominence that occurs with focus significance is saying to the hearer, ‘This is important, listen’.” For Halliday, new information is focal and it is the element that ‘is marked by prominence.’ In Roberts (1998:109) cited in Ofoe (2007:8), focus is defined as “a conventionally encoded mode of picking out a distinguished constituent or constituents in a sentence, which constituent plays a special role with respect to the immediate discourse context of utterance of that sentence.” Following an argument that focus marking is contrastive, Dakubu (2005:02) notes that “newness of information must not necessarily be interpreted as contrasting information as focus can also mean the assertion of a choice among conflicting possibilities.” This is to say that for an element to be seen as prominent there should be more than one element to choose from. Following this, Ofoe (2007:10) defines focus as “a signalling code of device available in a language, used to specify or assign an emphatic University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 16 contrastive status to relevant arguments or in any discourse to replace an earlier assumption of the hearer, single out an element for contrastive emphasis or to fill in the knowledge of the hearer.” He believes that for an element to be focused in a discourse there should be an earlier assumption which the focus element comes to replace. Ofoe’s definition of focus seems to fall in line with that of Aboh et al (2007). They say “[f]ocus refers to that part of the clause that provides the most relevant or most salient information in a given situation” (Aboh et al 2007:1). They assert that a new expression will be most salient or relevant if it is in contrast with another element in a preceding discourse. They refer to the non- focus part as ‘background.’ From the foregoing definitions, it appears ‘salience’ and ‘prominence’ are central to the definition of focus. Thus, based on all that is found in the literature focus can be defined as a means by which a speaker presents new information or confirms already existing information by singling out what is deemed important from other possibilities with the aim of conveying new information to the addressee. By this, the speaker tries as much as possible to send a convincing signal as to how important the message is to the addressee. 2.2 Focus marking strategies Linguists generaly seem to agree on the fact that focus marking differs from one language to another. Focus marking could be prosodic, morphological, syntactic or a combination of any of these (Boadi 1974; Ameka 1992; Saah 1997; Fiedler et al 2006; Aboh 2007; Dovlo 2008 and Amfo 2010). Saah (1997) mentions English as a language whose focus marking is by intonation. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 17 This is to say that focus constituents are stressed. He also observes that Japanese marks focus with a combination of intonation and morphology. Fiedler et al (2006) in their study observe that Tangale is one of the Chadic languages that mark focus prosodically. Just to mention a few languages in which focus is marked prosodically. Other languages mark focus morphologically; particular morphemes are used as focus markers. In view of this, Boadi (1974) and Saah (1997) identify na and de(ε) as focus markers in Akan. Boadi (1974) makes a distinction between the two focus markers. Semantically, he indicates that na shows exclusion while de(ԑ) shows inclusion. He notes that “the difference between na and de(ԑ) lies in the relative drasticness with which the new information is defined” (Boadi 1974:8). He makes it clear that both markers however, draw attention to referents. He focuses on the semantics of these morphemes and asserts that “a constituent to which na is attached obviously becomes the focus of the message being transmitted and is interpreted as additional information” (Boadi 1974:7). Boadi argues again that na serves as an underlying form for both deictic copula ne and ko (the particular one), the most restrictive determiner. The two morphemes occur in the same syntactic slot. Again he posits that na does not only show precision in definition but also presupposes certainty on the part of the speaker. De(ԑ), on the other hand, does not show precision and has a limited referential scope over the focused constituent. Na-response suggests an affirmative questions while de(ԑ)-response suggests negative questions. Saah (1997) corroborates Boadi (1974) indicating that na and de(ԑ) are both focus markers in Akan. They argue that the use of na and de(ԑ) go beyond University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 18 exclusiveness and inclusiveness. In view of this, they posit that na is a contrastive marker while de(ԑ) is a non-contrastive marker. Meanwhile, Amfo (2010) analyses focus marking from the perspective of pragmatics. According to her, na and some other morphemes (like n(so) and mpo) are used to mark focus whereas de(ԑ) is used as a topic marker in Akan. She notes that na is the only focus marker which is distinctive in the language. It is the only marker that can perform functions like completion, selection, replacing and restricting. Thus, she differs from Boadi and Saah who see de(ԑ) as a focus marker. Amfo shows that sometimes, other markers are used together with na to show different forms of focus in the language. She identifies n(so) and mpo as inclusive markers where n(so), an additive marker and mpo, a scalar marker also signal information in Akan. In his study, Ameka (1992) differentiates between (y and ᶑ which focus mark argument and predicate respectively. He mentions three types of foci which are argument, predicate and sentence foci and notes that in Ewe the two makers are for the first two types respectively and either of the two may have scope over the sentence focus. Sometimes, ᶑ precedes the focused predicate constituent but (y is always preceded by the focused constituent. Since his study was comparative, he indicates that Akan has only one focus marker whose scope is over all three types of foci. He realises a as a variant of na, the only focus marker in Akan, and posits that it is used to mark focused NPs which are clauses by themselves. Ofoe (2007) identifies n as a focus marker in Dangme. He demonstrates that, like other Kwa languages, the focused constituent is preposed to the clause-initial position and that is followed by the focus marker n . He notes University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 19 that there can be only one focused constituent in a clause as compared to topic constituents. This is because focused constituents are always within a clause. The focus marker n occurs after a focused constituent, that is, at the pre- clausal position. In his extensive study, Dovlo (2008:224) identifies k as focus marker in Logba (Ikpana). He posits that two strategies are involved in focus marking; this is as a result of the presence of different dialects. The focus marker k immediately follows the focused element after it is fronted in the Alakpeti dialect. The situation is not the same in the Tota dialect in that, instead of the focus marker, an appropriate independent pronoun follows the focused element after it is fronted. Just like in Akan, Dangme Ewe and Logba, in Ɔkere, focus can be marked lexically by means of the morpheme ne which is a focus marker in the language. The use of this focus marker is discussed in chapter four (4.1.1). In their investigation in West African Languages, Fiedler et al (2006) make another observation that Kwa and Gur languages mark focus both morphologically and syntactically. This confirms Saah’s (1997:2) assertion that focus in Akan is marked both morphologically and syntactically. He asserts that morphologically, a focus marker or morpheme is attached to the constituent in focus and syntactically, it must obligatorily occur in what he calls the focus position. It appears this is consistent with Hudu’s (2012) assertion that in Dagbani, a Gur language, there are four focus particles ka, n, la and mi that mark contrastive focus. The focus types these particles mark are subject focus, non-subject focus, predicate focus and clausal focus. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 20 Morphemes that are used as focus markers have syntactic positions in clauses. This happens to be the case in Ɔkere. The syntactic position of the focus marker in Ɔkere is after the focused element. This will also be discussed in chapter four of the thesis. Another way of marking focus is by cleft construction (Boadi 1974; Ameka 1992; Saah 1997). According to Saah (1997:2), Ameka (1992), and Van Valin and Lapolla (1997), French and Italian are languages that use mainly cleft construction to mark focus. From their studies, Boadi (1974) and Saah (1997:3) observe that it is possible to use cleft construction with the focus marker na in Akan. The cleft construction is a type where an expletive is used together with the focus particle to signal new information in a discourse. The focused element is positioned between the expletive and the focus particle as in the structure [Expl.+be+Foc]. Cleft construction occurs in Akan also (Boadi 1974 and Saah 1997), where, the expletive ε together with the copular verb yε are used for cleft constructions. Saah (1997) mentions that, two types of clefts – the plain and negative clefts can show the position of the focused element in a cleft construction. The examples in (1) illustrate plain (a) and negative (b) clefting respectively in Akan. (1) a. -yε Ama na ͻ-di-i aduan no. It-was Ama FOC 3SG-eat-PST1 food DEF ‘It was Ama who ate the food.’ (Saah 1997:3, ex.2a) 1 In this thesis, the use of the completive aspect (see Osam, 2004) is analysed as past tense by Saah (1992 ,1997) and Boadi (1974) University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 21 b. -n-yε Ama na ͻ-hu-u Kofi. It-NEG-be Ama FOC 3SG-see-PST Kofi ‘It was not Ama who saw Kofi’. (Saah 1997:3, ex.3a ) Ameka (2010:169) also mentions plain and negative clefting in support of Boadi (1974) and Saah (1997). He adds that there are other forms of cleft constructions which are, conditional, temporal and reason in Ewe. He then explains that ny ‘it is’ signals the plain cleft and it is positioned after the focused constituent. For the other forms, the focus signal is positioned at sentence initial position, before the focused element. He further notes that “the main relationship between the focus constructions and the cleft constructions is that the constituents which fall within the scope of a cleft construction are typically focus marked” (Ameka 2010:169). The Ewe examples (2) illustrate plain (a) and negative (b) clefts respectively. (2) a. N -é w -nyé me-le mi fi -ḿ . Thing-FOC 3SG-COP 1SG-be.at:PRES 2PL teach-PROG ‘Something it is I am teaching you.’ (Ameka 2010:169, ex. 58a) b. Me-nye boso-wo ko-e le tɔ.me o 3SG:NEG-COP whale-PL only-FOC be.at:PRES river NEG ‘It is not only whales that are in a river.’ (Ameka 2010:169, ex. 58b) Again, Boadi (1974) observes that pseudo-clefting can also be used to signal new information. In this structure, the focused element can occur at either sentence-initial, sentence-medial or sentence-final positions. According to Boadi (1974:42), clefting, pseudo-clefting and na focused sentences are synonymous in Akan even though they have different constructions. Mirto (2009:154) also observes that in the Sicilian variety of University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 22 Italian, a ‘do-support’ is used in pseudo-clefting. The verb fari ‘do’ is used in such constructions, as shown in (3a) while (3b and c) exemplify pseudo- clefting in Akan. (3) a. Babbiari fa. to.joke does ‘He is (only) joking.’ (Mirto 2009:154) b. Sɛnea meyɛɛ adwuma no ne yi. How I-PST-do work it is this ‘How I did the work is this.’ (Boadi 1974:13, ex.C.5) c. Wo ne onipa ko nti a me-ba-ae you are person the because of who I-come-PST ‘You are the person because of whom I came. (Boadi 1974:14, ex. E.4) In examples (3b and c) adwuma ‘work’ and wo ‘you’ have been pseudo- clefted. Adwuma is in sentence-medial while wo is at sentence-initial position. Data in Ɔkere shows that the morpheme de can be used with ne (focus marker) in cleft construction and some word classes can also undergo Pseudo-clefting. This will be discussed in chapter four (sections 4.1.2) 2.3 Types of focus Focus constructions come in various forms. Lambrecht (1994, 2000) mentions three types of focus. These are argument focus (AF), predicate focus (PF) and sentence focus (SF). He asserts that in AF, the syntactic scope of the focus marker is over the nominal or adverbial argument in the sentence. In the second type of focus which is PF, the syntactic scope of the focus marker is either the verb or predicate that is focused. In the third focus type, which is SF, the syntactic scope of the focus marker is over the whole sentence or proposition. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 23 In trying to draw a difference between the three focus types, Lambrecht (1994:296) uses the concept of markedness. He asserts that predicate-focus is analyzed as unmarked focus structure while argument-focus and sentence- focus are marked focus structures. He posits that “since predicate-focus sentences are unmarked for their articulation, they have more than one interpretation” (1994:296). The structure of Ɔkere, as an SVO language, may allow at least two of these foci. 2.4 Focused elements A close study of the literature on focus construction attests to the fact that not all elements are focused in a clause (Boadi 1974; Saah 1997; Akrofi Ansah 2010). Variation in word order may occur depending on the language group but it does not cause any change in the kind of constituents that can be focused. All major constituents such as noun phrases, predicative adjective, nominalised verbs and some adverbials in a clause can be focused in Akan, Ewe, Dangme and Logba (Ikpana) (Boadi 1974; Saah 1997; Ameka 1992; Ofoe 2007; Dovlo 2008). In view of this, the present study will examine how noun phrases, adjective phrases, verb phrases and adverb phrases are focused in Ɔkere. 2.5 Syntactic position of focused elements Studies on focus construction in various languages have proved that focus elements do not occur just anywhere in a clause; they occur at particular syntactic positions. Aboh (2007) observes, in his comparative study on Kwa and Bantu languages, that Kwa languages have a fixed word order whereas Bantu languages have a free word order. He makes a distinction in the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 24 information structure in the two language groups. He notes that both focused and topicalized constituents occur on the left periphery in a clause in Kwa languages. This involves movement of the topic/focused constituents to the specifier position of the inflectional phrase in both cases. Again he identifies ya and as topic and focus markers respectively in Gungbe whose syntactic position is directly after the fronted element. In Kwa languages, subject versus object asymmetry is displayed where the focused subject requires an ex-situ strategy that forces the occurrence of the focus marker always. In Boadi (1974) and Saah (1997), the Akan focused elements are said to be fronted to the left and then followed by the focus markers na and de(ε . Aboh (2007:85-86) discovers two focus strategies: verbal and non-verbal focusing. He describes non-verbal focusing as any non-verbal category that is fronted to the left of the focus marker (Gungbe). A bare noun, an adjectival phrase, an adverbial phrase, a locative phrase and many others are examples of non-verbal categories that can be fronted to the left periphery of . Content questions can also be fronted to the left of the focus marker. He claims that in-situ wh-phrases are excluded in Kwa languages. Long distance movement occur in non-verbal focusing. However, with the verbal focus, the verb phrase is fronted and he identifies two strategies: one in which the focused verb is fronted as can be found in Gungbe. For the other strategy, the fronted verb is a nominalised reduplicated form which precedes the focus marker. This situation can be found in Ewegbe. Nevertheless, he notes that Bantu languages display in-situ wh-questions which are not possible in Kwa languages. He asserts that Bantu languages have both ex-situ and in-situ wh-questions due to University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 25 their free word order. This allows both leftward and rightward topic/focus in Bantu languages. On the contrary, Hyman and Polinsky (2007) make an extensive description of focus situation in Aghem, and observe that focus in Aghem is an unusual phenomenon; focus expression occurs on what they call IAV (immediately after verb). That is, the element that is focused is either the entire verb phrase or the object of the clause. Like wh-words, focus expressions appear immediately after the verb. They discuss the various syntactic positions of the focus marker in a clause. They note that in some languages, it is structured in the CP layer, for others, it is in the inflectional layer and the final group has it in the verbal layer. In relation to this assertion, they note that Aboh (2006) classifies Aghem among the third group on the basis of some data he gathered from the language. Aboh argues that the difference between Kwa and Gur languages on the one hand and Bantu languages on the other, lies in the fact that focus occurs in the complementizer layer for the former and in the latter, it occurs in the verbal layer. He terms the former group a high focus language and the latter a low focus one. A close study of focus construction in Ɔkere shows that focus in Ɔkere as a Kwa language is consistent with the features of focus found to exist in Kwa language. Focused elements are always fronted to the left periphery with the appropriate focus marker coming right after it. This is discussed in chapter four (section 4.1.1). University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 26 2.6 Pragmatic properties Information structure comes in the form of topic or focus. Erteschik-shir (2007) in his study compares contrastive and restrictive topics and foci. He notes that elements can function contrastively as both topics and foci. Contrastive elements are clearly defined because contrast divides topic/focus into subsets and one set/element is chosen over the other. The latter undergoes elimination. The eliminated set could either be pronounced or dropped depending on the speaker’s mode of presentation of items of elements in a discourse. In (4a), Ama is the chosen element and Kofi is the element that is eliminated. This can also be said as in example (4b) below and the sentence will still be grammatical. (4) a. Ama, not Kofi, will go to the market. b. Ama will go to the market. In both sentences, Ama remains the focus in the structure. On the contrary, restrictive focus selects an element from a whole lot without contrasting it with any other element in the group. Restrictive elements, on the other hand, need no overt specification since they are derived from world knowledge. According to Erteschik-shir (2007:50), restrictive elements are not too different from contrastive elements in that they both combine topic (they range over a contextually specified set) and focus (one element of the set is focused) properties. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 27 Studies have shown that information structure is determined by word order in every language. Apart from the syntactic structures of focus constructions, they also have their pragmatic forms. The choice of a focused constituent in a discourse depends on the meaning that a speaker would want to convey to an addressee. Even though a focused constituent indicates new information in an utterance, pragmatically, the speaker assumes that some of the content is known to the speaker. The known part is therefore referred to as the background information which is also termed presupposition (Boadi 1974:7). The concept of focus is developed in Lambrecht (2000) based on the concept of focus in Lambrecht (1994). Here he defines the concept of ‘focus’ as “that element of a pragmatically structured proposition whose occurrence makes it possible for the sentence to express a ‘pragmatic assertion’, i.e. to convey new information to an addressee” (Lambrecht 2000:612). Gebert (2009) avers that some languages are pragmatically oriented. In these languages word order is governed by pragmatics (Gebert 2009:307). She notes that the free word order in Polish and Russia (Slavic languages) allows free movement of arguments which shows a “progression from old to new information.” Word order does not affect the pragmatic import of a sentence. In view of this, Amfo (2010) reveals some pragmatic properties of focus constructions in Akan. She does this through Sperber and Wilson’s (1986, 1995) relevance theory together with Dik et al’s (1981) typology of focus function. According to Amfo (2010:197), Sperber and Wilson suggest that “an ostensively communicated utterance (or stimulus) must be of some relevance to the interlocutor by the mere fact that it has been deliberately communicated.” University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 28 She notes that the function of focus could be completive, selective, expanding, restrictive or parallel. She shows that the completive focus function fills a gap in the pragmatic information of the addressee and these are answers to wh-question words. Selective focus selects a focused constituent of correct value from two constituents. She agrees with Boadi’s (1974) assertion that the Akan focus marker na can serve as completive, selective and replacing focus function. Na, together with the exclusive markers, nko and ara signal restrictive focus. Kiss (1998) distinguishes between identification focus and information focus. He argues that identification focus has syntactic and semantic properties which information focus does not have. Identification focus, he avers, is the English cleft constituent and it is preposed to the specifier position of a functional projection. He also identifies the only-phrase as identification focus. The role of information focus, on the other hand, is to carry new information. This, however, does not involve any syntactic reordering. According to him, information focus occurs in every utterance, in that, every utterance is intended to convey a particular message. This literature is relevant in this study because cleft construction occurs in Ɔkere. Moreover, every utterance made in the language has an intended purpose, that is, to communicate something important to the addressee. Again, the only-phrase and other related phrases like the even-phrase are identified in Ɔkere. It will be interesting to discuss all phrases that are capable of signalling information. For pragmatic purposes, a critical investigation will be done as to find out whether morphemes that behave like nko and ara exist in Ɔkere. The University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 29 pragmatics of the morphemes ako, ara, nso, mpo and koraa will be investigated in chapter four of the thesis. 2.7 Summary Literature relating to focus constructions was reviewed in this chapter. It was realised that languages mark focus differently. Focus marking may be done prosodically, morphologically, syntactically or a combination of these. Based on the literature, it was observed that Ɔkere marks focus both lexically and syntactically. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 30 CHAPTER THREE A SKETCH GRAMMAR 3.0 The Structure of the Language In this chapter, I present a sketch of the phonology of Ɔkere. I also present aspects of the morphology of the Ɔkere noun word and verb word. I do a brief discussion of adjectives and adverbs as well as the syntax of the language. 3.1 The phonology of Ɔkere Every language has its own sound system and its writing system. This section focuses on aspects of the phonology of Ɔkere. It will consider vowels and consonants and tone in the language. The distribution of vowel and consonant sounds will be highly crucial to this study. I therefore present in brief, the inventory of sounds in Ɔkere. 3.1.1 Ɔkere Sound System Dakubu (1988:81) gives an inventory of consonant sounds that are common to all Guan languages. She gives the set of consonants in Table 1 as the inventory of consonants in Guan languages. She argues that / ʃ / does not occur in most Guan Languages. However, she observes that it occurs in Ɔkere. She attributes this occurance to the influence of Akuapem since Ɔkere communities are close to Akuapem speaking communities. She is not too strong on this assertion because Gua and Latε which are also Hill Guan languages do not have this influence even though they are also close to Akuapem speakers. She also observes that /p/ in Hill Guan languages occur in only loan words from Twi. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 31 Table 1: Consonants of Guan Languages (Dakubu 1988:81) Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Labio- Velar Plosive b d g P t k kp Affricate ǰ tʃ Fricative f s (h) Frictionless Continuant (Nasal) w I y m n ɲ ŋ 3.1.2 Ɔkere Consonants The following is a chart of Ɔkere consonants. Table 2: Ɔkere consonant chart (Adapted from Akrofi Ansah 2002) Bilabial Labio- dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Labial - Velar Glottal Plosive p t k kw k kw kp b d gw gw gb Affricate ts ʨ ʨɥ ʥ ʥɥ Nasal m n ɲ ŋ Lateral l Trill r Fricative f s ɕ ɕɥ ʍ h Approxim ant/Glide ɥ j w The sounds /ts/ and /ʨ/ are free variants in Ɔkere. Even though the written form is ‘ky’, phonetically, /ts/ and /ʨ/ are used interchangeably without University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 32 causing any change in meaning. This situation is not different in Latε (Akrofi Ansah 2009:23). A few examples of words with these consonants can be found in table 3 below. Table 3: /ʨ/ and /ts/ as variants in Ɔkere /ʨ/ /ts/ Gloss aʨu atsu ‘soup’ ʨ ts ‘dance’ nʨ nts ‘water’ ʨ ts ‘building’ ʨεkrε tsεkrε ‘pour’ It appears Dakubu’s (1988) assertion that the sound /p/ occurs in only loan words seems to be confirmed because so far the only word in which /p/ occurs (from the data gathered) is ͻpono ‘table/door’. It seems ͻpono is borrowed from Akan. 3.1.3 Ɔkere Vowels There are ten oral vowels in Ɔkere; these are /i, ɪ, e, ε, ᴂ, a, u, ʊ, o, ɔ/. Figure 3 below shows the various positions of Ɔkere oral vowels. Front Back High i u ɪ ʊ Mid-High e o Mid-Low ε ɔ Low ᴂ a Figure 3: Ɔkere vowel chart (Adapted from Sulemana 2011) University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 33 Apart from /e/, /o/ and /æ/ all the others have nasal counterparts. In table 4 below are words in which oral vowels and their nasal counterparts can be found: Table 4: Words with oral vowels and their nasal counterparts Oral vowels Nasal vowels /i/ aji ‘tree’, ‘stick’ d ‘bite’ /ɪ/ fɪ ‘to sell’ fɪ ‘sound’ /e/ ebi ‘fruit’ /ε/ kɛ ‘snake’ dε ‘to hit’ /a/ ka ‘to hear’/‘to stay’ ka ᷉ ‘to turn fufu’ /u/ h ‘fufu’ h ‘to see’ /ʊ/ anakʊ ‘place’ kpʊkpʊ᷉ɛ ‘bad’ /o/ dodobi ‘small’ /ɔ/ ɔ ba ‘hand’ hɔ ‘use’/ ‘take’ /æ/ æɲimkpɛbi ‘old man’ Some of the examples in table 4 reveal cases in which oral vowels and their nasal counterparts cause change in meaning. 3.1.4 Vowel Harmony Vowel harmony (VH), according to Dolphyne (1988:16), is “[t]he restriction on the distribution of vowels which makes it necessary for the vowels of only one set to occur in a given word”. As a result, vowels in a language that has VH are grouped into various sets. In Akan, for instance, vowels are grouped according to the position of the tongue root during production. This brings about +ATR (Advance Tongue Root) vowels and -ATR (Unadvance Tongue University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 34 Root) vowels. In the former, the tongue root is pushed forward during the production of the vowel. In the latter, the tongue is either in neutral position or retracted. Similarly, in Ɔkere, vowels are grouped into two sets, that is, [+ATR] (Advanced Tongue Root) and [-ATR] (Unadvanced Tongue Root) harmony, there is always a restriction in the type of vowels in words. In view of this, vowels are grouped according to the position of the tongue root in their production, as shown in the table 5 below. Table 5: Vowel harmony sets in Ɔkere Set I [+ATR] (advanced vowels) Set II [-ATR] (unadvanced vowels) + front -front +front -front i o ɪ ʊ e u ε ͻ ᴂ a All [+front] vowels are unrounded while [-front] vowels are rounded. /a/ is [- ATR] however, it can occur with both [+ATR] and [-ATR] vowels. Here are some transcribed examples: [+ATR] [-ATR] ajirebi ‘child’ asͻkʊ ‘somebody’ ajiti ‘stump’ ͻpʊnʊ ‘table’ oburoʥo ‘plantain’ εdɪɪtε ‘mate’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 35 It could be observed that the words in the left column contain only [+ATR] vowels, except /a/ (i, e, o and u), while those in the right column contain only [-ATR] vowels (ɪ, ε, a, ͻ and ʊ). [+ATR] vowels do not co-occur with [-ATR ]vowels, except /a/. Another parameter for classifying vowels is lip posture. Vowels may be grouped based on whether they are produced with rounded or pursed lips, called rounding harmony (Dolphyne 1988). It appears rounding harmony does not occur in Ɔkere. The rounding nature of a vowel in pronoun does not affect the vowel(s) in the stem of a word next to it. The examples in (5) illustrate this. (5) a. mɪ d d ‘my charcoal’ b. ɛ nɪ b r ʥ ‘our plantain’ In (5a), the rounding nature of /o/ and /u/ in odudu ‘charcoal’ does not affect /ɪ/ in the possessive mɪ ‘my’ in. In (5b) the vowels, in the possessive ɛ nɪ ‘our’ and those in the noun oburoʥo ‘plantain’ do not affect each other in any way. 3.1.4.1 Exceptions to VH rules We have mentioned that Ɔkere has vowel harmony. However, there are some exceptions to the vowel harmony rules. Examples (6a-d) show the exceptions. (6) a. éb ɛ ‘lice’ b. miɛ n ‘hair’ c. s mɛ ‘to send’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 36 These examples show the vowels /e/, /i/ and /u/ occurring with /ɛ/. In (6a, b), /e/ and /i/ occur in the same word with /ɛ/ while in (6c) /u/ occurs with /ɛ/. The sounds /e/, /i/ and /u/ are [+ATR] vowels but it appears they occur in the same words with /ɛ/ which is a [-ATR] vowel without causing any change. This does not conform to the VH rules in Ɔkere. 3.1.5 Tone in Ɔkere Like most Kwa languages, Ɔkere is a tone language. It has two level tones, that is, high (H) and low (L) as in kɛ ‘to show’ and ky ‘building’. The two level tones combine to give falling and rising tones as in h ‘to blow’. Grammatical and lexical functions are determined by tone. The examples in (7) show words tones in Ɔkere. (7) ͻ w ‘snake’ w cold nɪ ‘your’ plural nɪ ‘our’ ʨ ‘building’ ʨ ‘dance’ p tâ ‘fish’ anʊ ‘mouth’ h ‘to blow’ Examples (8a, b) show grammatical difference as a result of change in tone. (8) a. Kw s bé-d ɛ bͻ ɛ s m Kwasi NEG-able do work DEF ‘Kwasi cannot do the work.’ b. Kwasi b -dé ɛ bͻ ɛ s m Kwasi FUT-able do work DEF ‘Kwasi can do the work.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 37 In (8a and b), the form be has been glossed differently as a result of change in tone. The form be with a high tone marks negation in (8a). In (8b), the tone has been changed to low, thereby rendering it a future marker. 3.2 The morphology of Ɔkere I will discuss the morphology of the noun word and the verb word in this section. I will also discuss briefly the structure of adjectives and adverbs. 3.2.1 The Ɔkere noun ord The noun word in Ɔkere consists of a stem(s) and affixes just like every other language. Dolphyne (1988) asserts that a noun in Akan has a stem or more. She notes that there are simple and compound stems, where a simple stem has only one syllable and the compound has more than one. It appears nouns in Ɔkere have almost the same structure. A noun in Ɔkere has either one or more syllables. The following examples illustrate this Ɔkere syllable structure. (9) a. cv ky a-kɛ᷉ Building/room SG-wife ‘a room/building’ ‘a wife’ b. cvv -boé SG-animal ‘an animal’ c. ccv -krɛ ‘blood’ d. cvcv sétɛ ‘floor’ e. cvcvcv -kɛ s n SG-young lady ‘young lady’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 38 f. cvcvv -k r a SG-village ‘a village g. ccvcv -krɛ n SG-fowl ‘fowl’ It appears Ɔkere has the kind of nouns whose stem Appah (2003) describes as complex or compound complex stems. They come as a result of univerbation or the analysis of phrases and clauses as words. The examples in six illustrate this; (10) a. cvcvcvcv a-nwu-tɛ-le-ho SG-head-inside-hard-AG ‘a wicked person’ b. cvvvcvcv i-bie-a-gyi-ho SG-market-3SG-eat-AG ‘a seller/market woman’ Whatever the structure of the stem, it must be a combination of the basic syllable types cv, cvc, ccv and cvv. 3.2.1.1 The nominal prefixes The vowels /a-/, /e-/, /i-/, /o-/, /ɛ-/ and /ͻ-/ can be prefixed to a noun in Ɔkere. The nominal prefix can also be a homoganic nasal. That is, the nasal nominal prefix is one that has the same place of articulation as the consonant that follows it. The examples in (11) illustrate this; University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 39 (11) a. -krɛ b. m -fͻɛ Blood oil It appears plural marking is quite inconsistent in Ɔkere, however, some observations have been made. The homoganic nasal /n/ is the main plural marker in Ɔkere. It is the plural marker for nouns that have /a-/ as prefixes (12). The nominal with the prefix /ͻ-/ has /ɛ/ as plural marker (13). Nominals without prefixes and some of those that are prefixed with /i-/ have either /e/ or /ɛ/ as plural markers (14) while those with /e-/ and /ɛ-/ in the singular do not change their form in the plural but may have numerals expressing exact quantities (15). The following examples illustrate the observation above. (12) Singular plural a. -krɛ n -krɛ n SG-fowl PL-fowl ‘fowl’ ‘fowls’ b. a-bobi m -b b SG-insect PL-insect ‘insect’ ‘insects’ (13) a. ͻ -b ɛ -b SG-hand PL-hand ‘hand’ ‘hands’ b. ͻ -n ɛ -n SG-leg PL-leg ‘leg’ ‘legs’ (14) a. i-biɛ ɛ-bie SG-louse PL-louse ‘louse’ ‘lice’ b. f nͻ ɛ -f nͻ egg PL-egg ‘egg’ ‘eggs’ (15) a. é-s b és b -nyͻ SG-eye eye-two ‘eye’ ‘two eyes’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 40 b. ɛ-so ɛ-so-nyͻ SG-ear SG-ear-two ‘ear’ ‘four ears’ 3.2.1.2 Nominal suffixes There are various nominal suffixes for different purposes in Ɔkere. Even though some nominal prefixes are plural markers, they may add plural suffixes. The suffix -fo serves this purpose. Consider the following example. (16) ͻ-hene a-hen-fo SG-chief PL-chief-PL ‘a chief’ ‘chiefs’ The suffixes -fo, -ni and -ho are agentive suffixes. They are suffixed as follows: (17) a. kua o-kua-fo farming SG-farming-AG ‘farming’ ‘farmer’ b. sukuu sukuu-ni school school-person ‘school’ ‘pupil/student’ c. polisi polisi-ni police police-person ‘police’ ‘a police’ d. ibiegyi i-bie- a-gyi-ho marketing SG-market-3SG-eat-AG ‘marketing’ ‘seller’ The suffixes -ni and -ho may also function as identificational suffixes. Consider the following; University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 41 (18) a. o-hia o-hia-ni SG-poverty SG-poverty-person ‘poverty’ ‘a poor person’ b. sika o-sika-ni money SG-money-person ‘money’ ‘a rich person’ c. anyinti a-nyinti-ho pregnancy SG-pregnant-person ‘pregnacy’ ‘a pregnant woman’ The suffix -ni also marks citizenship and nationality in Ɔkere. The examples below illustrate this; (19) a. Abiriw Abiriw-ni Abiriw Abiriw-person ‘Abiriw’ ‘a citizen of Abiriw’ b. Ghana Ghana-ni Ghana Ghana-person ‘Ghana’ ‘a Ghanaian’ The suffix -ɛne is attached to kinship nominals to mark plurarity in Ɔkere. The examples below are illustrations. (20) a. ani ani-ɛne Mother mother-PL ‘mothers’ ‘mothers’ b. ɛse ɛse-ɛne father father-PL ‘father’ ‘fathers’ c. a-gyamɛ 2 n-nyamɛ-ɛne SG-sibling PL-sibling-PL ‘sibling’ ‘siblings’ 2 The plural of agyamɛ is nnyamɛ and ɛne may be attached to it and this will be rendered as nnyamɛ-ɛne ‘siblings’. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 42 The final suffix to be mentioned is the suffix -de. It marks plurality and it seems there is only one nominal to which it can be attached. This is illustrated below. (21) anum anumu-de adult/elderly adult-PL ‘elderly’ ‘adults’/ ‘the elderly’ It appears Ɔkere has really borrowed from Akuapem, in that the suffixes -fo and -ni are Akan/Akuapem suffixes so the nominals to which they attached are Akan/Akuapem nominals. This suggests that there is stratification of the lexicon where affixes are attached to words that have the same origin. 3.2.2 The Ɔkere verb ord In this section I am going to discuss the Ɔkere verb word. I will look at the semantic classification as well as the morphology. 3.2.2.1 Semantic Classification of the Ɔkere verb word In this section, I classify the Ɔkere verb word semantically, based on two parameters – what the verb expresses which yields two classes of verbs and transitivity which yields three classes. 3.2.2.1.1 Classification of the Ɔkere verb ord based on what they express Verbs in Ɔkere can be classified into two main categories based on their semantic properties. They may encode either stative or dynamic meaning. The two verb categories are discussed in this section. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 43 Stative verbs, according to Appah (2003:27), are “verbs that indicate the condition of an entity”. In other words, the state of an entity is described with the use of a stative verb. Examples of such verbs in Ɔkere include those in (18) which are used in the examples in (19). (22) a. lͻɛ ‘to be sick’ b. kpͻ n ‘to be tired’ c. d ‘to be big’ d. s re ‘to fear’. (23) a. Af r mͻ d . Farm DEM be.big ‘This farm is big.’ b. Kwasi lͻɛ . Kwasi be.sick ‘Kwasi is sick.’ c. Ay r b nɛ -kpͻ n . child DEF PERF-tired ‘The child is tired. In examples (23a and b), the verbs d ‘to be big’, lͻɛ ‘to be sick’ and kpͻne ‘to be tired’ show the state of Afuri, Kwasi and Ayirebi a ‘the child’. Dynamic verbs on the other hand, encode dynamic events or actions. Some dynamic verbs found in Ɔkere are in (24).They can be used as illustrated in examples (25). (24) a. sͻ , ‘to buy’ b. da kɛ ‘to cook’, c. kyɛ kérɛ ‘to pour’, d. fra kyé ‘to peel’ e. fu ky ‘to open’. (25) a. Akosua né-fu ky ͻpono a Akosua PERF-open door DEF ‘Akosua has opened the door.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 44 b. Ama f ɛ tɛ b bié s . Ama sell.HAB thing be.located market DEF top ‘Ama sells at the market.’ The verbs funkyi ‘to open’ and fe ‘to sell’ show the dynamism in the events in (25). 3.2.2.1.2 Classification of verbs based on transitivity Like any other language, the number of NP arguments employed in the use of a verb is taken into consideration. The number of NP arguments a verb takes is determined by the transitivity of the verb. In this section, I will briefly discuss the three types of transitive verbs in Ɔkere. These are intransitive, transitive and ditransitive verbs. 3.2.2.1.2.1 Intransitive verbs These are verbs that take only one NP argument. They are also called one place predicate verb. Intransitive verbs in Ɔkere include those in (26). The examples in (27) below show the use of transitive verbs. (26) a. s ‘to cry’ b. m s ‘to laugh’ c. s ré ‘to fear/to be afraid’ d. gu ‘to run/to run away’ (27) a. Ama s Ama cry.COMPL ‘Ama cried.’ b. Anyemi a né-gua boy DEF PROG-run away ‘The boy is running away.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 45 The verb su ‘to cry’ and gua ‘to run away’ do not need an NP argument in the object position to make complete meaning. 3.2.2.1.2.2 Transitive verbs Transitive verbs, also called two place predicate verbs, take two NP arguments to make grammatical sentences. Ɔkere transitive verbs include those in (28). They can be used as shown in the examples (29). (28) a. ku ‘cut’ b. dɛ᷉ ‘hit’ c. fͻ ‘to wash’ d. mͻ ‘to kill’ (29) a. Kwadwo n -k y . Kwadwo PERF-cut tree DEF ‘Kwadwo has cut the tree.’ b. Yaw nɛ -dɛ᷉ y r b a Yaw PERF-hit child DEF ‘Yaw has hit the child.’ The verbs ku ‘to cut’ and dɛ ᷉‘to hit’ require two NP arguments in the subject and object positions. 3.2.2.1.2.3 Ditransitive verbs These are also known as three place predicate verbs. They are verbs that take three NP arguments, one in subject position and two in object position. Example is found in (30) below. The use of ditransitive verbs are exemplified in (31). University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 46 (30) a. nɛ᷉ ‘give’ b. f nɛ ‘smell’ c. da ‘change’ (after paying for something) (31) a. nɛ Kofi t gy 1SG give.COMPL Kofi food ‘I gave Kofi food.’ b. ky nɛ -da m ns woman DEF PERF-change 1SG back ‘The woman has given me change.’ In (31), the verb nɛ ‘to give’ has me ‘me’, Kofi and teyi ‘food’ as the three NP arguments. 3.2.2.1 Morphology of the verb word Verbal affixes constitute the most prominent part of the morphology of a verb in Ɔkere. In Ɔkere, verbal affixes include pronominal prefixes, tense and aspect, mood, and negation. These affixes will be discussed in this section. 3.2.2.1.1 Pronominalization Pronouns are words used in place of nouns in a sentence. They are a class that cannot be avoided in human language since they are a replacement of nouns. Pronominalization is crucial in the syntax of Ɔkere. Akan distinguishes pronouns along the lines of person and number and then case marking, getting nominative and accusative forms of pronouns (Osam 2004:24). Ɔkere also makes such distinctions. Table 4 provides the set of pronouns in Ɔkere, differentiated along person, number and case. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 47 Table 6: Ɔkere personal pronouns Person Number Nominative Accusative 1 Singular me me Plural ɛ né ɛ né 2 Singular wo wo Plural ɛ né ɛ né 3 Singular mo Plural ɛ mo ɛ mo Inanimate Singular e mo Plural ɛ ɛmo The examples below show the use of Ɔkere pronouns in both nominative and accusative cases. (32a) me ‘I’ marks nominative and the object is an NP, ayirebi a ‘the child’ but in (32b), ayirebi a ‘the child’ has been pronominalized giving mo which is the accusative form. (32) a. -h y r b . 1SG.NOM-see.COMPL child DEF ‘I saw the child. b. -h m 1SG.NOM-see.COMPL 3SG. ACC ‘I saw him.’ It is worth noting that Ɔkere does not make gender distinction. In (33), Ama and Yaw are pronominalized as ‘she’ and mo ‘him’ respectively. The same pronominalization will be realized should there be a change in position of Ama and Yaw. This is exemplified in (33a-d). (33) a. Ama dε᷉ Yaw Ama hit.COMPL Yaw ‘Ama hit Yaw.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 48 b. A-dε᷉ m 3SG.NOM-hit 3SG.ACC ‘She hit him.’ c. Yaw dε᷉ Ama. Yaw hit.COMPL Ama. ‘Yaw hit Ama.’ d. A-dε᷉ m 3SG.NOM-hit.COMPL 3SG.ACC ‘He hit her.’ In (33c), Yaw is the subject and Ama is the object. After pronominalizing the nouns in (33d), Yaw becomes a and Ama becomes mo. When an inanimate entity is pronominalized both nominative and accusative forms are realized as zero or null. This is shown in (34): (34) a. Bͻͻlo a dɛ᷉ abie a. ball DEF hit.COMPL chair DEF ‘The ball hit the cahir.’ b. E-dɛ᷉ bié 3SG.NOM-hit-COMPL chair DEF ‘It hit the chair .’ c. E-dɛ᷉ mo 3SG.NOM-hit.COMPL it.OBJ ‘It hit it.’ In (34a), bͻͻlo a ‘the book’ is the subject and abie a ‘the table’ is the object. In (34b), bͻͻlo a has been pronominalized and it is realized as e. In (34c), both bͻͻlo a and abie a have been pronominalised and have been realized as e and mo. So in (34c), there is a null subject pronoun and a null object pronoun but the meaning is understood. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 49 Like in other languages, the pronominal prefix is attached to the verb. Let us look at the examples in (35). In (35a, b) the pronoun a is prefixed to the verb bɛ ‘come’. (35) a. -bɛ t . 3SG-SUBJ-come.COMPL here ‘S/she came here. b. Kofi né -bɛ t . Kofi FOC 3SG-come.COMPL here ‘It was Kofi who came here.’ Object pronouns are not normally suffixed to the verb in Ɔkere. Consider the examples in (36). (36) a. Kwasi biakɛ nyiɛ Kwasi greet.COMPL man DEF ‘Kwasi greeted the man.’ b. Kwasi biakɛ mo Kwasi greet.COMPL 3SG.OBJ ‘Kwasi greeted him.’ c. * Kwasi biakɛ-mo Kwasi greet.COMPL-3SG.OBJ In (36b) the object pronoun mo ‘him’ is not attached to the verb. However, in (36c) mo is attached to the verb biakɛ ‘to greet’ thereby rendering the sentence ungrammatical. 3.2.2.1.2 Tense and Aspect Tense and aspect is highly crucial in every human language. The time within which a particular situation occurs is very important to the speaker. According to Comrie (1976:1-2), “[t]ense relates the time of the situation referred to some University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 50 other time, usually to the moment of speaking”. In view of this, I must say that Ɔkere distinguishes between non-future and future tenses. This is in relation to what occurs in Akan (Osam 2004) Comrie (1976:3) defines aspect as “the different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation.” Following Comrie’s definition of aspects, I argue that habitual, progressive, prospective, and perfect aspects can be found in Ɔkere. However, Collins (2011) asserts that Ɔkere has six distinct tense/aspect forms which are present, progressive, future, immediate future, past and perfect. He does not mention the habitual form as part of the tense/aspect form. It appears that what Osam (2004) calls continuative also occurs in Ɔkere. Tense/aspect is marked in different ways. Some of them are marked morphologically while others are marked by tone. This will be studied in the following sections. 3.2.2.1.2.1 Completive The completive is marked by tone in the language. It is indicated on the bare form of the verb by tone. The completive is used to indicate a completed action. (37) a. kyé fͻ t b ény dé Woman DEF wash.COMPL things yesterday ‘The woman washed yesterday.’ b. nw dé y r b wé s kuu. Last time child DEF go.COMPL school ‘Last time the child went to school.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 51 In examples (37a and b), the completive aspect is marked by a high tone. This occurs on the verbs fͻ ‘washed’ and ‘went’. This expresses a completed action by akye ‘woman’ and ayirebi ‘child’ (see also Osam, 2004). 3.2.2.1.2.2 Future The morpheme be/bε is prefixed to the verb to mark the future. The choice of be/bɛ depends on the kind of vowels that occur in the verb in order to conform to the VH rules of the language. (38) a. kyé b -fͻ téb ky . Woman DEF FUT-wash things tomorrow ‘The woman will wash tomorrow.’ b. Ayirebi a b -wé sukuu kye ᷉ child DEF FUT-go school tomorrow ‘The child will go to school tomorrow.’ There is a low tone on the future marker b /bɛ . In (38a), bɛ has been chosen because of the presence of the vowel /ͻ/ whereas in (38b), b has been chosen to harmonise with the vowel /e/. Be and bɛ are prefixed to the verbs fͻ and we respectively. 3.2.2.1.2.3 Habitual In the habitual aspect, the verb is used in its bare form, there is no morpheme attached to it. (39) a. kyé fͻ téb . Woman DEF wash.HAB things ‘The woman washes.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 52 The difference between completive and habitual lies in tone. Adverbials like daa ‘everday, enyede ‘yesterday’ and enwade ‘last time’ can also be used to differentiate between the completive and the habitual. These are examples with noun subjects: (40) a. Daa kyé fͻ t b . Everyday woman DEF wash things ‘Everyday, the woman washes.’ b. ny de kyé fͻ t b . Yesterday woman DEF wash things ‘The woman washed yesterday.’ 3.2.2.1.2.4 Progressive The morpheme ne/nε expresses progressive in Ɔkere. Either ne or nɛ is prefixed to the verb to show the progressive. The choice of ne or nɛ is made in accordance with the VH rules of the language. (41) a. kyé n -fͻ t b . Woman DEF PROG-wash things ‘The woman is washing.’ b. Kwasi né-gy h Kwasi PROG-eat fufu ‘Kwasi is eating fufu.’ In (41a, b), the morphemes nɛ and ne express the progressive and they are prefixed to the verbs ‘fͻ’ ‘to wash’ and gyi ‘to eat’ respectively. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 53 3.2.2.1.2.5 Prospective The use of nè/nɛ as shown in (41a and b) are used to express actions that are in progress. However, when the future marker bɛ is added to nè/nɛ and both are prefixed to the verb, nɛ -b expresses the prospective aspect in Ɔkere as in (42). This expresses an action that is yet to be performed. (42) kyé nɛ -b -fͻ t b . Woman DEF PROG-FUT-wash things. ‘The woman is about to wash.’ 3.2.2.1.2.6 Perfect The perfect marker in the language is nè/nɛ . This marker, nè/nɛ , is prefixed to the verb. (43) a. kyé n -fͻ t b . Woman DEF PERF-wash things ‘The woman has washed.’ b. Kwasi n -gy h Kwasi PERF-eat Sfufu ‘Kwasi is eating fufu.’ The choice of nè/nɛ depends on the kind of vowel found in the verb. This is for the sake of vowel harmony. This applies to the progressive and future markers né/n and b /b respectively. 3.2.2.1.2.7 Continuative The continuative, according to Osam (2004), is an alternative to the progressive but involves stative verbs in Akan. He calls it ‘a secondary aspect’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 54 (Osam 2004:15). This occurs in Ɔkere in the form of verbs like yeri ‘to stand’ and worɛ ‘to wear’. Consider the examples: (44) Anyemi yér ts s . boy DEF stand house DEF top ‘The boy is standing on the building.’ In (44), even though there is no progressive morpheme attached to the verb y r ‘to stand’, the progressive aspect is expressed in it. Like the habitual aspect, a verb in the continuative aspect takes a high tone as exemplified in (44). 3.2.2.1.3 Mood Mood distinction is made in Ɔkere. These are indicative and imperative moods. The discussion will be focused on the imperative mood. Distinction is made between imperative proper and optative in Akan, as indicated by Osam (2004). In the imperative proper in Ɔkere, a command is issued to a second person singular without the presence of the subject but the subject is understood as in (45) (45) a. Bɛ ! Come ‘come!’ b. Ky naé! Sit down ‘Sit down!’ On the contrary, in the optative mood, a command is directed at non-singular entities with the presence of a subject marker. A command can also be directed at a third person through a second person where the second person causes the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 55 third person to do something. The morpheme nɛ is used in such situations. These are exemplified in (46a-c). (46) a. -ky naé! 2PL-sit down ‘(You should) sit down!’ b. n kyinae! 1PL sit down ‘Let us sit down!’ c. Nɛ Kofi kyinae! Let Kofi sit down ‘Let Kofi sit down!’ In (46a), a command is issued to the second person plural subject. In (46b), the command is issued to the group that is to perform the act of the command and in (46c), the command is issued to a second person to cause Kofi to sit. 3.2.2.1.4 Negation Ɔkere uses the morpheme bé/bɛ to mark negation. It is prefixed to the verb. However, the choice of bé/bɛ depends on the set of vowels in the verb. Unlike the future marker b /bɛ , the negative morpheme bé/bɛ takes a high tone. The illustrations below show the use of the Ɔkere negative marker in the various tense/aspect. (47) a. Habitual: The negative marker is prefixed to the verb. Kofi bé-w sukuu. Kofi NEG-go.HAB school ‘Kofi does not go to school’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 56 b. Completive: The negative marker is prefixed to the verb. Kofi bé-wé sukuu. Kofi NEG-go.COMPL school ‘Kofi did not go to school.’ c. Perfective: The negative marker and the perfective marker n /nɛ are prefixed to the verb. Kofi bé-n -w sukuu. Kofi NEG-PERF-go school ‘Kofi has not gone to school.’ d. Progressive: The negative marker and the progressive marker né/nɛ are prefixed to the verb. Kofi bé-né-w sukuu. Kofi NEG-PROG-go school ‘Kofi is not going to school.’ 3.2.3 Adjectives Adjectives are modifiers of nouns. Adjectives in Ɔkere can be classified semantically according to age, value, human propensity, physical property, colour, dimension and speed, as in Akan (Osam 1999). Here are a few examples from each of the categories and their uses. The examples in a) example illustrate attributive use whereas those in b) examples illustrate predicative use. (48). Physical property adjectives: ɛle ‘hard’, famfa/afa ‘sweet, delicious’, bɛtɛɛ ‘soft’, etc a. tégyi faḿf b. Tégy mͻ b f . food delicious food DEM be delicious ‘a delicious food’ ‘This food is delicious.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 57 (49). Value adjectives: fɛfeɛw ‘beautiful’, kͻse᷉, ‘good’ etc. a. t dé fɛ feɛ w b. t dé b ͻ feɛ w dress beautiful dress DEF be beautiful ‘A beautiful dress’ ‘The dress is beautiful. (50). Human propensity adjectives: ɛsé ‘painful’, kitikiti ‘energetic’, hyeehyee ‘boast ful’, k asea ‘foolish’, etc. a. nyiɛ hy hy b. nyiɛ dé hy hy man boastful man DEF be boastful ‘A boastful man’ ‘The man is boastful’ (51) Dimension adjectives: kponkpo ‘big’, dodobi ‘small’, akye ‘crooked, kurukuruwa ‘round’, etc. a. f r d d b b. f r mͻ dé d d b farm small farm DEM it.is small ‘A small farm’ ‘This farm is small.’ (52) Colour adjectives: fitaa ‘white’, tuntu ‘black’, kͻkͻ, ‘red’ etc. a. wͻ ré t t b. wͻ ré dé t t book black DEF book DEF it is black ‘The black book’ The book is black.’ (53) Speed adjectives: ntoatoaso ‘continuous’, brɛɛw ‘slow’, ͻhare ‘fast’, etc y r b y b ͻ h ré child DEF self be fast ‘The child is fast.’ In example (53) it appears speed adjectives perform only predicative function and so there is no example under (a). University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 58 (54) Age: adedɛ ‘old’, ahohoɛ ‘new’, etc. a. ky dédɛ b. Ky dé dédɛ building old building DEF it is old ‘An old building’ ‘The building is old.’ It can be observed from the data that the syntactic slot of an attributive adjective in a sentence in Ɔkere is after the noun it modifies. In other words modification is done to the right of the modified entity, just like Akan (Saah 2004). 3.2.4 Adverbs Adverb, one of the major syntactic categories, which functions as the modifier of a verb in a sentence, is the focus of discussion in this section. Adverbials come in various forms. The categorisation of adverbs is based on their semantic properties. Saah (2004) investigates the categorisation and the syntactic position of adverbs and adverbials in Akan and observes that they occur after the verbs they modify. He discusses six types of adverbs in Akan namely manner, pace, time/temporal, frequency, epistemic and aspectual adverbs. Even though these categories can be found in Ɔkere, the types I will discuss in Ɔkere for the purpose of this study are manner, time/temporal and locative/place. The syntactic position of adverbs in Ɔkere is after the verb they modify. Just like Akan (see Saah 2004:50), “modification is done to the right of the constituent that is being modified” in Ɔkere. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 59 3.2.4.1 Manner adverbials The way an action is performed is described by using a manner adverbial. Let us consider the following examples. (55) a. Kwasi gy tégy t t . Kwasi eat.COMPL food DEF fast ‘Kwasi ate the food quickly.’ b. Kofi b r b f w s Kofi speak.HAB anger on ‘Kofi speaks angrily.’ C. b f w s né Kofi b r . anger on FOC Kofi speak.HAB ‘It is in anger that Kofi speaks. The adverbs ntente ‘quickly’ and abufuw so ‘angrily’ show how the actions ‘eating’ and ‘speaking’ are performed in (55a and b). They occur after the verb phrase in each case. However, abufuw so can occur sentence initially where it is focused as in (55c). This is possible because abufuw ‘anger’ is a noun which is combined with the postposition so ‘on’. This is in line with Saah’s (2004) assertion that nouns that are used as manner adverbials combine with postpositions like so ‘on’ or mu ‘in’ to occur clause-initially, where they are fronted for focus. There will be more discussion of this in chapter four (section 4.4) 3.2.4.2 Temporal/time adverbials Temporal adverbs show or indicate the time an event takes/ took place. (56) a. Ɔ héné wé k ré tɛ nw d Chief DEF go.COMPL town DEF in last time ‘The chief went to the town last time.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 60 b. Kwadwo nw bͻ m ɛ sé ky k r Kwadwo head do POSS pain day one ‘Kwadwo has headache everyday’/ ‘Kwadwo always has headache.’ c. y k r Kofi nw bͻ m ɛ sé. day one Kofi head do POSS pain ‘Everyday Kwadwo has headache.’ In examples (56a, b), the adverbs enwade ‘last time’ and kye ako ara ‘every day’ occur clause-finally. However in (56c), kye ako ara occurs in sentence initial position. According to Saah (2004:55), “temporal adverbs have scope over the entire proposition because they situate the proposition within a particular time frame”. The Akan examples show that they occur both sentence-initially and sentence-finally. This happens to be the case in Ɔkere as the examples show. 3.2.4.3 Locative/place adverbs Locative/place adverbs indicate the location of an event. Example (57) exemplifies the use of locative adverbs (57) a. -k sé bɛ t s PL-ladies DEF come.COMPL here but ɛ m bɛ -n- s s k r 3SG.PL NEG-PERF-leave message INDEF ‘The ladies came here but did not leave any message.’ b. Kofi nɛ mͻ m n- m f gy n Kofi CONN POSS PL-friend DEF look for.COMPL n k né ɛ m ky naé Somewhere FOC 3SG sit.COMPL ‘Kofi and his friends looked for a place and sat.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 61 Examples (57a, b) show the syntactic positions of the adverbs to ‘here’ and anako ‘somewhere’. They occur after the verbs bɛ ‘to come’ and gyan ‘to look for’. They can also occur sentence-initially where they can be focused. This will also be discussed further in chapter four (section 4.4) of the thesis. 3.3 The Syntax of Ɔkere In every language, words occur in a particular order. In this section, the word order in Ɔkere will be studied since it will be needed to guide the analysis of the Ɔkere data in later chapters. 3.3.1 Sentence Structure in Ɔkere According to Hengeveld et al (2004), word order is partly determined by the parts of speech system of a particular language. In some languages, lexical items are specialized for particular functions and so syntactically, their slots are defined. This is to say that the nature of the lexical item helps in identifying the syntactic slot of a word. For instance, a modifier is positioned in a noun phrase. In other languages where lexical items are not specialized for particular syntactic slots, the lexical item may combine the functions of more than one word class and the language may employ other strategies like word order constraints in order to make a syntactic slot identifiable. Word order possibilities are quite flexible/unrestricted in the former while there is less flexibility/ restriction in the latter (Hengeveld et al 2004). For instance, in “the green book is on the table”, a change in position of any of the words will render the sentence ungrammatical because each word is in its identifiable University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 62 position and the syntactic slots are defined. An adjective cannot take the place of a noun and vice versa. Ɔkere happens to fall in the first category because it has word classes and it has defined syntactic slots. Modifiers occur with elements they modify. An adjective, for example, occurs in the noun phrase as shown in the example (58). (58) a. Akosua nɛ -sͻ t dé dédɛ k Akosua PERF-buy dress old INDEF ‘Akosua has bought an old dress.’ b.* Akosua nɛ -sͻ adedɛ ataade ako Akosua PERF-buy old dress INDEF In (58a), adedɛ ‘old’ occurs after the noun ataade ‘dress’ and the indefinite article ako ‘an’ occurs after the adjective. All the elements in the NP occur in their defined positions in Ɔkere sentence. However, in (58b), adedɛ occurs before ataade and it renders the sentence ungrammatical. Dryer (1992:81) also examines 625 languages and observes that there is a correlation between certain grammatical elements and the order of verb and object in a sentence. He notes that OV languages are postpositional, that is, adpositions in such languages are placed after the object while VO languages are prepositional, that is, adpositions are placed before the object. In a pair of elements where X precedes Y more often in VO languages then {X, Y} is a correlation pair where X is a verb partner and Y is an object partner. In other words, X marches on to a verb whereas Y marches onto an object. Languages with this word order will have meanings of sentences changed should there be a change in the positions of the words in the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 63 sentences. In the same way, other languages with various sentence structures will be affected if their word order is altered. Ɔkere is strictly structured SVO just like most Ghanaian languages; that is, the subject precedes the verb and the verb is also followed by an object. Example (59) illustrates this assertion. (59) y r b gy tégy . Child DEF eat.HAB food DEF ‘The child eats the food.’ In (59), ayirebi a ‘the child’ which is the subject NP, occurs at the left edge of the construction. gy ‘eats’ which is the verb immediately follows the subject NP. The verb is also followed by tegyi ‘food’, the object NP. 3.4 Summary In this chapter I have presented the inventory of sound system and the syntax of Ɔkere. Ten oral and seven nasal vowels have been identified with respect to Tongue Root harmony. The chapter looked at the morphology of the noun word and the verb word. The discovery was that both categories have affixes. A brief study was also done on the adjectives and adverbs in the language. It was realised that adjectives and adverbs occur on the right side of items they modify. Ɔkere has an SVO structure where all syntactic slots are defined, that is, each word class has its slot. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 64 CHAPTER FOUR FOCUSED ELE ENTS IN Ɔ ERE 4.0 Introduction This chapter deals with elements that can be focused in Ɔkere. The various focus strategies in the language are discussed in detail. I show that focus in Ɔkere is marked syntactically, lexically or combinations of these focus strategies. It has been observed that, in many languages, major syntactic categories can be focused (Boadi 1974; Saah 1997; Ameka 1992). This study shows that in Ɔkere, nouns (subject and object NPs), verbs, adjectives and adverbs can be focused, much in agreement with Lambrecht’s (1994) categorisation of focus structure as discussed in chapter four (section 4.1.2). For easy identification, focused elements will be presented in uppercase letters in the English gloss. 4.1 Focus strategies in Ɔkere Generally, different strategies are involved in focus marking. This section discusses the various focus strategies employed in Ɔkere. 4.1.1 Lexical/syntactic focus marking As stated earlier (chapter two section 2.2), many Kwa languages use focus particles to signal new information in terms of focus marking. Quite a number of these languages have been studied and it has been observed that some have only one while others have two focus markers (see Boadi 1974; Saah 1997; Amfo 2010 for Akan; Ameka 1992 for Ewe; Dovlo 2007 for Logba; Ofoe 2007 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 65 for Dangme; Aboh 2007 for Aghem). The difference in number may be due to the fact that some languages combine focus strategies to mark focus. However, ne has been identified as the focus particle in Ɔkere. Like many Kwa languages, the focused element is fronted to the left periphery and followed by the focus particle ne. Consider the examples (60) below: (60) a. Bͻͻlo a ka ᷉ abie mo ase. Ball DEF lie chair POSS under ‘The ball is lying under the chair.' b. Abie mo ase ne bͻͻlo a ka ᷉. Chair POSS under FOC ball DEF lie ‘It is UNDER THE CHAIR that the ball is.’ c. Me sumε ayirebi a ISG send.COMPL child DEF ‘I sent the child.’ d. Ayirebi a ne me s m mo child DEF FOC 1SG send.COMPL 3SG ‘It is THE CHILD that I sent’. In examples (60b) and (60d) above the focused elements are abie mo ase ‘under the chair’ and ayirebi a ‘the child’. These occur at the left periphery of the clauses and are followed by the focus particle ne. However in (60a) and (60c) they occur in their canonical position. In a situation where the focused element is positioned at the left periphery of the sentence or in the sentence-initial position the focused element is normally followed by the focus particle. In Ɔkere, the focus particle ne occurs immediately after the focused element. This is shown in examples (61) below. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 66 (61) a. Anyiε a ne a-b abie a. Man DEF FOC 3SG-break.COMPL chair DEF ‘THE MAN broke the chair.’ b. Ɔpono a mo ase ne agyinamoa a koto. Table DEF POSS under FOC cat DEF squat ‘It is UNDER THE TABLE that the cat is squatting.’ In (61a) the focus particle ne occurs immediately after the fronted element anyiɛ a ‘the man’ to show prominence. The situation is not different from what pertains in (61b); the focus particle ne occurs after the fronted element ͻpono a mo ase ‘under the table’. The only difference between these examples is that in (60a), the focused element is a subject NP while in (61b), it is an object NP. 4.1.2 Cleft construction As discussed in chapter 2 section 2.2, a cleft construction is a type of construction in which an expletive and a focus particle are used to signal contrastive information. Clefting is attested in Ɔkere. Again, both plain and negative cleft constructions can be seen in Ɔkere. These are exemplified in (62). The portmanteau morpheme de ‘it is’ can be used for forming plain cleft constructions in the language. De is a portmanteau morph that carries the expletive ‘it’ and the copular verb ‘be’. Bεεde is the negative of de. (62) a. De anyemi a ne -yér kya a so. It.is boy DEF FOC SG- stand.CONT building DEF top ‘It is THE BOY who is standing on the building.’ b. Bεεde anyemi a ne a-yéri kya a so. Not boy DEF FOC 3SG- stand.PROG building DEF top ‘It is not THE BOY who is standing on the building.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 67 c. De ane yeri kya a so? It.is who stand building DEF top ‘Who is standing on the building?’ In (62a), the NP anyɛmi a ‘the boy’ occurs after the morphemes de and is followed by the focus marker ne. The example in (62b), illustrates negative clefting. Here, the NP anyemi a ‘the boy occurs after bɛɛde and is followed by the focus particle ne. (62c) is a question in which the morpheme de occurs and (62a) could be an answer to it. As noted above bɛɛde in (62b) is a suppletive form that is used when forming negative cleft constructions in Ɔkere. Every language has its own clefting strategy. Let us now consider example (63) and see how clefting and pseudo-clefting manifest in Ɔkere: (63) a. Ayi a ne Ama b . Stick DEF FOC Ama break.COMPL ‘It is THE STICK that Ama broke.’ b. De ayi a ne Ama b . It.is stick DEF FOC Ama break.COMPL ‘It is THE STICK that Ama broke.’ c. tε Ama am-bia de ayi a. what Ama break it is stick DEF ‘What Ama broke is the stick. It could be seen that the focused element in all three sentences is the noun ayi ‘stick’. (63a) shows a normal fronting of the noun ayi. It is followed by the Ɔkere focus particle ne to show that it is focused. Example (63a) shows that focus involves fronting in Ɔkere. In (63b), ayi a has been clefted by the use of the portmanteau morph de and is followed by the focus particle ne. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 68 In (63c), the construction involves pseudo-clefting. Here, even though the noun ayi is the focus in the sentence, it does not begin the sentence, it is ɛtɛ ‘what’ that begins the sentence. Ayi a occurs in sentence-final position and it is introduced by the portmanteau morph de. This seems to be the case in most Kwa languages and is also different from the case in the Sicilian variety of Italian which employs a ‘do-support’ in the construction of pseudo-clefting, as discussed in chapter 2. Clefting is also possible with nominalised verbs as illustrated in the following sentences. (64) a. fonkye ne Esi f nky . sweeping FOC Esi sweep.COMPL ‘SWEEPING is what Esi did.’ b. De εfonkye ne Esi f nky . It.is sweeping FOC Esi sweep.COMPL ‘It is sweeping that Esi did.’ c. tε Esi εm-bͻε de εfonkye. what Esi COMPL-do be sweeping ‘What Esi did is sweeping.’ In (64a-c), the nominalised form of the verb fonkye ‘to sweep’ is the object of focus in the sentences. In (64a), the nominal εfonkye has been fronted whereas in (64b), it has been clefted. fonkye has been pseudo-clefted in example (64c). Let us consider the following for adverbial clefting: (65) a. De enyede ne m -b . It.is yesterday FOC 1SG-come.COMPL ‘It was YESTERDAY that I came.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 69 b. De to ne me-bε enyede. It.is here FOC 1SG-come COMPL yesterday ‘It is HERE that I came yesterday’ In (65a and b), the temporal adverb enyede ‘yesterday’ and the locative adverb to ‘here’ have been clefted respectively. This is done to strengthen the focus element in each case. The morpheme de ‘it is’ is used in the construction of both clefting and pseudo- clefting however, not all elements can be pseudo-clefted in Ɔkere. Clefting of adjectives is possible but pseudo-clefting renders a sentence ungrammatical in Ɔkere. Consider the following sentence: (66) a. De ͻfeεw ne ataade a bo. It.is beautiful FOC dress DEF be ‘It is BEAUTIFUL that the dress is. b. * tɛ ataade a bo de ͻfeεw what dress DEF be it.is beautiful. In (66a), the adjective ͻfeε ‘beautiful’ has been clefted to describe the beauty of the dress in question. Just saying it is beautiful with the predicative adjective ‘beautiful’ in its canonical position is not strong enough a description. However, in (66b), ͻfeε occurring in a pseudo-clefting construction is ungrammatical. This is due to the fact that pseudo-clefting is not possible with adjectives. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 70 4.2 Types of Focus Structures in Ɔkere Lambrecht (1994:221) mentions three types of focus structure. They are argument focus, predicate focus and sentence focus. According to Lambrecht, this categorization helps in the easy identification of focus domains with major syntactic and semantic categories. All the words in a sentence may contribute to its complete meaning. However, not every single word can be marked for focus. Grammatical categories like articles and adpositions cannot be focused in a sentence. In almost all the studies on focus, it is only major syntactic categories, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that are focused (Boadi 1974; Ameka 1992; Saah 1997; Aboh 2007). Akrofi Ansah (2010) notes that nouns, nominalised verbs, predicative adjectives and time and place adverbials can be fronted and marked with the focus marker ne in Lεtε, a language related to Ɔkere. In Ɔkere, subject and object NPs, nominalised verbs, predicative adjectives and adverbs can be focused. I will illustrate this in the following sections. 4.2.1 Argument focus As noted in chapter one, in discussing focus types, arguments in a construction, subject or object, may be focused (Lambrecht 1994). In this section, I am going to discuss how subjects and objects may be focused in Ɔkere. 4.2.2 Subject focus In Ɔkere, subject NPs are marked for focus if that is what a speaker intends to present as new information in a discourse. They are followed immediately by a focus marker. Aboh (2007:85) indicates that in many West African Kwa University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 71 languages, “subject focus always requires an ex-situ3 strategy that forces the occurrence of the focus marker”. This indicates that in focus constructions, a subject must be preposed and be followed immediately by a focus marker in order to show prominence. In Ɔkere, a subject that is marked for focus is preposed to sentence-initial position and is followed immediately by the focus particle ne, as expected in most Kwa languages. A pronoun that is prefixed to the verb after the focus marker refers to back to the focused subject. The examples in (67a, b) below illustrate this. (67) a. Ama ne a-fétɛ ɛta᷉ a bo Ama FOC 3SG-hang.COMPL cloth DEF be.located Afe a so. rope DEF top ‘It is AMA who hanged the cloth on the line.’ b. Kobε ne a-s m akasini a. Kobɛ FOC 3SG-send.COMPL young lady DEF ‘It is KOBΕ who sent the lady.’ The subjects ‘Ama’ and ‘Kobε’ in examples (67a) and (67b) are preposed and are immediately followed by the focus particle ne to show prominence. In (67a), focusing the subject Ama is an indication that it is Ama and no other person than Ama who hanged the cloth on the line. In (67b), the person who 3 Focused elements do not always occur in their canonical positions. When a focused constituent is positioned at clause-initial position, it is said to be ex-situ. The focused element is normally followed by a focus particle in situations where the language uses focus particles to mark focus. This is what normally occurs in most Kwa languages. However, when the focused constituent remains in its canonical position, Ameka (2010:146) observes that Bearth (1999a) asserts that in Kwa languages, such elements are unmarked or may be marked by pitch-accent or tone or marked by a focus-marking morpheme as in Akan. The focus particle does not co- occur with the focused element once it is in its canonical position. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 72 sent the lady is Kobɛ. (67b) tells the addressee that somebody has sent the lady and it is no other person than Kobε. In both examples, the pronominal copy a of the subject fills the gap that is left after Ama and Kobɛ have been preposed. It means that when a subject NP is preposed for focus it does not leave a gap, it leaves a pronominal copy behind. (68) * Ama a-b ayi . Ama 3SG-break.COMPL stick DEF The construction in example (68) is ungrammatical in that there is no focus marker as described. The construction here is a simple declarative sentence in Ɔkere and so there must be a focus particle immediately after the subject Ama. This means that the occurrence of the focus marker is obligatory. 4.2.3 Object focus The object NP in a sentence can be moved from the object position and fronted for focus in Ɔkere. The fronted object NP will be followed immediately by the focus marker ne. Consider the following examples; (69) a. Agyinamoa a k t εdeetε a so. Cat DEF squat.CONT mat DEF top ‘The cat is squatting on the mat.’ b. deetε a so ne agyinamoa a k t . Mat DEF top FOC cat DEF squat ‘It is on THE MAT that the cat is squatting’ c. Anyemi a yér kya a so. Boy DEF stand.CONT building DEF top ‘The boy is standing on the building.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 73 d. Kya a so ne anyemi a yér . Building DEF top FOC boy DEF stand.CONT ‘It is on THE BUILDING that the boy is standing’ In both (69b) and (69d) εdeetε a ‘the mat’ and kya a ‘the building’ are objects in the sentences but they have been fronted for focus leaving the object position blank. The focused objects are followed by the focus marker ne. In (69a) and (69c) the sentences are simple declarative sentences in which εdeetε a ‘the mate’ and kya a ‘the building’ are in their canonical object position. It will be highly ungrammatical to utter (70) where εdeetε ‘mat’ is focused but leaves a copy in the object position (see also Ameka 2010:152). (70) a. * Εdeetε a so ne agyinamoa a koto εdeetε. Mat DEF top FOC cat DEF squat mat In (69b), the addressee tries to correct an assumption formed by the speaker. Apart from asking the question in (71), to which (69b) is the answer, he might have thought of mentioning other possible places where the cat could be squatting, hence εdeetε is fronted by the addressee to show that it is only on the mat that the cat could be sqatting. (71) Ɔnofo ne agyinamoa a k t ? Where FOC cat DEF squat-CONT ‘Where is the cat squatting?’ The situation is not different in (69d). It is the location of anyemi a ‘the boy’ that is being questioned and (69d) clears any other assertion that might have University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 74 been made. This informs the speaker about the location which is kya a so ‘on the building’ thus the emphasis is on ‘the building’. Example (72) illustrates a situation where an object has been fronted leaving a gap in the canonical object position. [e] indicates a null pronoun (see Saah 1992) left at the canonical object position after it has been fronted. (72) K t a mo ansi ᷉ ne abobi a bo Hat DEF POSS back FOC insect DEF be.located [e ] ‘It is behind THE HAT that the cat is.’ The discussion seems to be centred on inanimate object. The situation with animate objects is different. Where the object is animate, a pronoun replaces the object in the object’s canonical position. Example (73) illustrates this observation: (73) a. Me tré akye a. 1SG call.COMPL woman DEF ‘I called the woman.’ b. Akye a ne me-tré mo. Woman DEF FOC SGall.COMPL 3SG ‘It is THE WOMAN that I called.’ In (73a) the object akye a ‘the woman’ is in the canonical position. In (73b), it has been fronted for focus and the pronoun mo ‘her’ replaces the focused element akye a ‘the woman’. The pronoun mo is a resumptive pronoun which refers back to the fronted element akye a in the sentence. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 75 It is ungrammatical to maintain the nominal object in the canonical object position once it has been focused, that is, a focus marker cannot occur after the object in its canonical position. Consider the examples in (74) (74) a. * Agyinamoa a k t εdeetε a so ne. Cat DEF squat mat DEF top FOC b. * Anyemi a yeri kya a so ne. Boy DEF stand building DEF top FOC It could be observed that the focus marker ne occurs at sentence-final position in (74a, b) and this renders the sentence ungrammatical. 4.3 Predicate focus (Nominalized Verb focus) In addition to nominal arguments, predicates can be focused. This section discusses the focusing of predicates, main verbs in sentences which must be nominalised before they can be fronted for focused. The process involved in nominalised verb fronting in Ɔkere is not different from what happens in Akan (Boadi 1974; Ameka 1992 and Saah 1997). Ameka (1992:8) asserts that “the process involves nominalization of the verb, fronting it and marking it with the focus particle”. In other words, the nominalised form of the main verb occurs at the sentence-initial position in a clause while the main verb remains in the clause. (75) a. E-gua ne a-n -gu . NOML-run FOC 3SG-PROG-run ‘RUNNING he is doing.’/ ‘He is running.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 76 b. -k t ne a-k t ͻpono a mo ase. NOML-squat FOC 3SG-squat.CONT table DEF POSS under ‘SQUATTING, it is under the table.’ (75a) and (75b) illustrate fronted nominalised verbs. Egua ‘running’ and εkoto ‘squatting’ are followed immediately by the focus marker ne and a tensed form of the verb is left in the clause, immediately after the focus marker. A speaker will say (75a) for instance, instead of (76) when he wants to tell an addressee that the doer is doing nothing else but running. (76) A-nɛ -gua. 3SG-PROG-run ‘He/she is running.’ Example (76) is a declarative sentence in which no element is made prominent and so no focus marker is required here. According to Ameka (1992:12), nominalization does not occur in all cases in verb fronting in Ewe; at least he does not see any overt nominalization in verb fronting in some dialects. He asserts that, in other cases, the verb may be nominalised and optionally marked with the argument focus particle (y and the nominalisation comes in the form of reduplication. This occurs in Anlͻ and Kpele. The situation in Ɔkere is different. It is a nominalised form of the verb that is fronted. Sometimes nominalization is realised by tone as in example (77a and b). This is also the case in Akan. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 77 (77) a. B r ne a-né-b r . Talk FOC 3SG-PROG-talk ‘TALKING, he is doing.’ b. B sɛ ne me b sɛ mo. Asking FOC 1SG ask.COMPL 3SG ‘It was asking that I asked him/ her.’ In example (77), the nominalized form does not have a nominalizer as compared to examples (75a, b). However, the nominalized form of the verb comes with high tone while the tensed form has either high or low tone depending on the tense. The main verb in (77a) is progressive and so it has low tone but in (77b), the tense is completive and it demands a high tone at least on the first syllable. 4.4 Adverb focus Adverbs in adjunct position according to Ameka (2010:154) can be placed in the clause-initial focus position and optionally marked for focus in all Kwa languages. Ɔkere is no exception. Here, the adverbial adjunct is preposed and is immediately followed by the focus particle ne. In examples (78a), (79a) and (8oa), the adverbials akye᷉ ‘tomorrow’, to ‘here’ and enyede ‘yesterday’ occur in their canonical positions, which is after the verb. But in (78b), (79b) and (80b), they are fronted for focus. They are temporal and locative adverbials. (78) a. Anyiε a b -bͻ ɛ esimi a akye . Man DEF FUT-do work DEF tomorrow ‘The man will do the work tomorrow.’ b. Akye ne anyiε a b -bͻ ɛ esimi a. Tomorrow FOC man DEF FUT-do work DEF ‘It is TOMORROW that the man will do the work.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 78 (79) a. Akεseni a b ͻpono a young lady DEF break.COMPL table DEF bo to. be.located here ‘The young lady broke the table here.’ b. To ne akεseni a b ͻpono a. Here FOC young lady DEF break.COMPL table DEF ‘It is HERE that the lady broke the table’ (80) a. Akye a k ky bo to Woman DEF give.birth be-located here enyede. yesterday ‘The woman gave birth here yesterday’ b. Enyede ne akye a k ky yesterday FOC woman DEF give.birth bo to. be-located here ‘It was YESTERDAY that the woman gave birth here.’ c. To ne akye a k ky enyede. Here FOC woman DEF give.birth yesterday ‘It is HERE that the woman gave birth yesterday’ Saah (2004:56) notes that ‘tomorrow’ and ‘yesterday’ are basically nouns that are used as adverbs of time and can be fronted for focus in Akan. They can thus occur at both sentence-initial and sentence-final positions. The case is not different in Ɔkere as the data shows in example 78 to 80. Boadi (1974:35) also observes that “in Akan, as in most other languages, adverbs are not only notionally referred to as time, place, reason and manner but can also be represented by generalised lexical items or pro-forms whose syntactic distributional properties are those of nouns”. He further explains that in Akan, manner adverbials cannot occur as nouns even though locative, temporal and reason adverbials are syntactically nouns, a reason for which they can be fronted for focus. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 79 Even though manner adverbials cannot be fronted in Ɔkere, it appears brɛɛw ‘slowly’ is an exception in (81b). Apart from structures like example (81b), it will be ungrammatical to front brɛɛw ‘slowly’ in cases such as (81c). (81) a. A-de ayirebi a εn brεεw. 3SG-take child DEF walk.PROG slowly ‘He/she is walking with the child slowly.’ b. Brεεw ne a-de ayirebi a n twu n -b . Slowly FOC 3SG-take child DEF walk take PROG-come ‘It is SLOWLY that he/she is coming with the child.’ c. * Brɛɛw ne a-gyi tegyi. slowly FOC 3SG-eat food In (81a), brεε ‘slowly’ occurs in its canonical position, after the verb. In (81b) it is fronted but the grammaticality of the sentence cannot be questioned. However, in (81c) even though the same adverb is used, the construction with brɛɛw is ungrammaical in Ɔkere. It may be possible with the act of eating but not with the act of walking. For this reason we may say that it is not a complete exception. The verb bo ‘be’ shows location in Ɔkere and so it occurs with the locative adverb to ‘here’ but when to is fronted for focus bo does not occur any more. It is ungrammatical for to ‘here’ to occur in sentence-initial position as in (82) because it must occur alone when fronted. (82) *Bo to ne akye a kotse enyede Be.located here FOC woman DEF give.birth yesterday University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 80 4.5 Adjective focus Adjective fronting is not a phenomenon that occurs in all Kwa languages. Ewe is an example of such languages. According to Ameka (1992:12), Ewe adjectives cannot be fronted for focus. On the contrary, in Akan, predicative adjectives can be fronted for focus (Boadi 1974 and Saah 1997). In Akan, when an adjective is fronted, a copy is either left in the rest of the sentence or the position is left blank. Adjective fronting is done in Ɔkere as illustrated in examples (83a) and (83b) however unlike in Akan, the construction becomes ungrammatical when a copy is left in the canonical position. (83) a. Ataade mͻ bo ͻ feɛ w dress DEM be beautiful ‘This dress is beautiful.’ b. Ɔfe w ne ataade mͻ bo. Beautiful FOC dress DEM be ‘BEAUTIFUL, this dress is’/ ‘This dress is beautiful.’ (84) a. fa ne tegyi mͻ bo. Delicious FOC food DEM be ‘DELICIOUS, this food is.’/ ‘The food is delicious.’ b.* fa ne tegyi mͻ bo afa. Delicious FOC food DEM be delicious Ɔfeε ‘beautiful’ is a predicative adjective and therefore its canonical position is sentence-final. In (83b), it has been moved to sentence initial position and is followed immediately by the focus marker ne. The situation is not different in (84a) in that afa᷉ ‘delicious’ has also been fronted for focus without leaving a University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 81 copy at the canonical position. The fronted adjectives have high tones as compared to Ɔfeε in its canonical position in (83a). Nominalized adjectives behave like nominalised verbs. Their nominalisation is either marked by a nominalizer or tone (high tone) as in (83b and c). In (84b), a copy of afa ᷉has been left in its canonical position thereby rendering the sentence ungrammatical; this is not a possible construction in Ɔkere. 4.6 Focus marking and content questions A content question is defined as a question that seeks information in order to fill a communication gap. In a communication process an addressee uses a content question to obtain required information from a speaker. Dixon (2012:37) defines it as “a question seeking information.” In other words it is a type of question that seeks a specific piece of information. Saah (1998:22) opines that “these sentences demand ‘full answers’ such as a phrase, a clause or sentence not just ‘yes’ or ‘no’…”. This confirms the fact that a content question demands an answer that fills a gap in communication. According to Cobbina (2013), content questions do not just seek confirmation but rather they seek a piece of information from the addressee to fill a gap in communication. They are questions that do not take ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for an answer. Boadi (2005:25) therefore describes content questions as “Pronominal questions to which ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would be inappapropriate in a discousrse.” Content questions are often characterized by the use of interrogative words and the type of answers they demand. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 82 Question words/phrases either occur at sentence-initial position or sentence-final position. This is the case in Akan (Boadi 1974; Saah 1988; Marfo and Bodomo 2005). According to these linguists, the wh-constituent can be preposed to sentence initial position in a clause and then marked by na, the focus marker in the language. Aboh (2007:85), on his part, observes that non- subject focus involves two strategies and these are in-situ and ex-situ strategies, that is, a Q-word can either be at clause final position or be fronted to clause- initial position, where Marfo and Bodomo (2005) call extra-sentential clause position. Both strategies occur in Akan. Below in (84) are some illustrations: (85) a. Kofi kͻͻ he? Kofi go.COMPL where ‘Where did Kofi go?’ b. he na Kofi kͻͻe? where FOC Kofi go.COMPL ‘Where did Kofi go?’ (Saah 1988: 18, ex.1&2) In example (85a), the Q-word (ε he ‘where’ is in-situ, that is, at clause final position whereas in (85b) it is ex-situ, that is, at clause initial position. Saah (1988) asserts that, semantically, ex-situ content constituents are more emphatic. Ɔkere also has the following as content question words that are used to elicit information in various contexts: ane ‘who’ mεntε ‘what’/‘which’ εbͻme ‘why’ ne ‘how many/‘much’ me ‘what’ mankye ‘when’/‘which day’ ɔnofo ‘where’ , mεntε bere ‘what time’/ ‘when’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 83 These question words/particles are used in the sentences below, based on which we can make some observations. Note that content question words in Ɔkere can either be in-situ or ex-situ as the examples below illustrate. (86) a. Kofi dε᷉ ane? Kofi hit.COMPL who ‘WHO is it that Kofi hit?’ b. Ane ne Kofi dε᷉ mo? Who FOC Kofi hit.COMPL 3SG ‘WHO did Kofi hit?’ c. Ama ne Kofi dε᷉ mo. Ama FOC Kofi hit.COMPL 3SG ‘It was AMA that Kofi hit.’ In examples (86a), it could be observed that ane ‘who’ is in-situ but in (86b), it occurs at clause initial position and it questions the object in both cases. Therefore the answer in (86c) shows the fronted object that is being questioned. This is ‘Ama’ which is immediately followed by the focus particle ne as is expected in Ɔkere. On the other hand, if it is the subject that is being questioned then ane cannot occur clause-finally as can be observed in (87), it can only occur ex-situ. Consider the following illustration: (87) Ane k t abie mo ansi ᷉ a? Who squat.PROG chair POSS back QP ‘WHO is squatting behind the chair?’ This particular construction in (87) does not permit in-situ content question word, in that, the subject is the focus of discussion. Example (88) answers (87), and it is evident that ane questions the subject in the clause. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 84 (88) Anyemi a k t abie mo ansi.᷉ Boy DEF squat.PROG chair POSS back ‘The boy is squatting behind the chair.’ Ane questions animate subject and object NPs in sentences. Therefore, it is inappropriate to use it to question an inanimate subject or object, as in (89). (89) * Ane bo prɛte a tɛ? Who be-located plate DEF in In trying to know what is on the plate, the question word ane ‘who’ cannot be used but mɛntɛ ‘what’. It is ungrammatical to utter (90) in that ane occurs clause finally, which the construction does not permit in this situation. This is because ane is supposed to question the subject and not the object. (90) *Abia a mo ansi ᷉ k t ane ? Chair DEF POSS behind squat.PROG who In (91a), ͻnofo ‘where’ occurs ex-situ but in (91b) it occurs in-situ. In both situations, it questions the location of kya ‘building’. (91c) gives the location of the building. (91) a. Ɔnofo ne kya a bo? Where FOC building DEF be-located ‘WHERE is the building?’ b. Kya a bo ͻnofo? Building DEF be-located where ‘WHERE is the building?’ c. Kya a bo okuré a tε. Building DEF be-located town DEF in ‘The building is in the town.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 85 Mɛntɛ ‘what’ also occurs both ex-situ and in-situ and it is used to question inanimate subject and object NPs in a sentence. Consider the following examples: (92) a. Ayirikyi-ho a nɛ -bͻ ɛ mɛntɛ? Mad-PERS DEF PROG-do what? ‘The madman is doing what? b. Mɛntɛ ne ayirikyi-ho a nɛ -bͻ ɛ a? What FOC mad-PERS DEF PROG-do QP ‘What is it that the madman is doing?’ c. Mɛntɛ ka ᷉ ɛdeetɛ a so a? what lie mat DEF top QP ‘What is it that is lying on the mat?’ In (92a), mɛntɛ ‘what’ is in-situ whereas in (92b), it occurs at sentence-initial position. It questions the object of the sentence in each case, that is, what the madman is doing. However, in (92c), the subject of the sentence is being questioned. It could be observed that in (92c) mɛntɛ is not followed by the focus marker ne. This is to show that the subject is what is being questioned. Another content question word that is used to question a subject or an object that refers to ‘day’ in Ɔkere is mankye ‘which day’. It can occur in both positions in a sentence, that is, in-situ and ex-situ. In (93a), it occurs clause- finally whereas in (93b), it is ex-situ. It questions the day Ama will be going to ‘Accra’. (93) a. Ama b -wé Nkran mankye? Ama FUT-go Accra which.day ‘Ama will go to Accra WHEN?’ b. Mankye ne Ama b -wé Nkran? Which.day FOC Ama FUT-go Accra ‘WHEN will Ama go to Accra?’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 86 The fact that Ama will be going to Accra is known to all but the day she will be going is what nobody knows. In order to know the day, the constructions in both (93a, b) may be used. Mɛntɛ bere ‘what time’, which occurs both in-situ and ex-situ, also questions the particular time an action takes place in a sentence. Examples (94a and b) illustrate the use of mɛntɛ bere in Ɔkere. (94) a. Sukuu-fo a pͻ n mɛntɛ bere? School-PL DEF close.HAB what time ‘The students close at what time?’ b. Mɛntɛ bere tɛ ne Kwame wé ta? What time in FOC Kwame go.COMPL there ‘WHAT TIME did Kwame go there?’ In (94a), mɛntɛ bere is in-situ and it questions the closing time of the students but in (94b), it is ex-situ and questions the time Kwame went to a particular place. A study of the data shows that not all question words can occur at both positions in a sentence. Some question words can only occur clause-initially while others can only occur in-situ. ɛbͻme ‘why’ for example can only be used in clause-initial position. A change in position renders the sentence ungrammatical, as in the examples below. (95) a. bͻme ne Kofi dε᷉ Ama? Why FOC Kofi hit.COMPL Ama ‘WHY did Kofi hit Ama?’ b. * Kofi dε᷉ Ama ɛbͻme? Kofi hit.COMPL Ama why University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 87 In (95a), εbͻme ‘why’ questions the reason for which ‘Kofi’ hit ‘Ama’ and it can only be preposed. With this, the grammaticality of (95b) is highly acceptable. However, the expression sɛ me ne ahu ‘for what purpose’ questions the reason for one’s action in Ɔkere and it occurs in-situ only. (96) Kofi dε᷉ Ama sε me ne a-hu? Kofi hit.COMPL Ama that what FOC 3SG-see.COMPL ‘Kofi hit Ama for what purpose?’ It is assumed that everybody does what they do for a purpose. In (96), Kofi hits Ama and the speakers seek to know why he did that. Again, in (97a) and (97b) below, the only syntactic position for me ‘what’ is clause final, it is ungrammatical to front it as in (97c) and (97d). (97) a. -tr wo ye me? 3SG-call 2SG that what ‘They call you what?’/ ‘What is your name?’ b. Wo nyε sͻ me? 2SG name call what ‘Your name is called what?’/ ‘What is your name?’ c.* Me ne εtre wo? What FOC call 2SG d. * Me ne wo nyε sͻ? what FOC 2SG name call Me ‘what’ is normally used when one wants to know somebody’s name. In (97a&b), the speaker wants to know the name of the addressee and the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 88 syntactic position is sentence-final. In (97c&d), me is in the wrong position thereby, making the sentence ungrammatical. 4.7 Focus and resumptive pronouns The role of resumptive pronouns in focus construction cannot be overlooked. A ‘resumptive pronoun’ is a pronoun that replaces a moved argument that is fronted for focus (Saah 1992). Ameka (1992:10) asserts that it is “the pronominal element that fills the slot of the fronted nominal constituent in the rest of the clause”. The resumptive pronoun must therefore agree in number and person with the nominal it refers to. The examples in (98) illustrate this; (98) a. Anyiɛ a h Esi. Man DEF see.COMPL Esi ‘The man saw Esi.’ b. Esii ne anyiɛj a h moi. Esi FOC man DEF see.COMPL 3SG ‘It is ESI that the man saw (her).’ c. Akye a s mɛ nyirebi a. Woman DEF send.COMPL children DEF ‘The woman sent the children.’ d. Nyirebii a ne akyej a s mɛ ɛmoi. Children DEF FOC woman DEF send.COMPL 3PL . ‘It is THE CHILDREN that the woman sent (them).’ The resumptive pronouns mo and ɛmo in (98b) and (98d) replace the objects Esi and nyirebi a ‘the children’ which have been moved from their canonical object positions and have been fronted for focus. In (98a) and (98c) the objects Esi and nyirebi a ‘the children’ occur in their canonical object positions. mo ‘her’ is a singular object pronoun which refers back to the singular noun Esi in University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 89 (98b) while ɛmo, ‘them’ a plural object pronoun refers back to the plural noun nyirebi a ‘the children’ in (98d). Esi and mo are co-indexed in (98b) while nyirebi and ɛmo, are also co-indexed in (98d) to show their co-referential relationships. 4.7.1 Object focus and resumptive pronouns Like subject focus, object focus requires resumptive pronouns that refer back to the fronted object. Animacy is considered important in this situation. A fronted animate object leaves a resumptive pronoun in its canonical position to refer back to it. Consider the illustrations in (99). (99) a. Anyiɛ a tré tegyi-mͻ-dahoɛ a. Man DEF call.COMPL food-POSS-vendor DEF ‘The man called the food vendor.’ b. Tegyi-mͻ-dahoɛi a ne anyiɛj a Food-POSS-owner DEF FOC man DEF tré moi call.COMPL 3SG ‘It is THE FOOD VENDOR that the man called (her).’ c. Akye-kpɛɛbi a nɛ sukuu- fo a sika. woman-old DEF give.COMPL student-PL DEF money ‘The old woman gave money to the students.’ d. Sukuu-foi a ne akye-kpɛɛbij a nɛ School-PL DEF FOC woman-old DEF give.COMPL ɛmoi sikak. 3SG Money ‘It is THE PUPILS that the old woman gave money to (them).’ e. Anyemi a dɛ᷉ gbei a. Boy DEF hit.COMPL dog DEF ‘The boy hit the dog.’ f. Gbeii a ne anyemij a dɛ᷉ moi. Dog DEF FOC boy DEF hit.COMPL 3SG ‘It is THE DOG that the boy hit (it).’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 90 In (99b) and (99d), the nouns tegyimͻdahoɛ ‘food vendor’ and sukuufo ‘pupils’ are co-referential with the pronouns mo and ɛmo respectively and they both refer to human entities. However, in (99a) and (99c) tegyimͻdahoɛ ‘food vendor’ and sukuufo ‘pupils’ occur in object position. In (99b) tegyimͻdahoɛ and mo are co-indexed while sukuufo and ɛmo are also co-indexed in (99d). Gbei ‘dog’ occurs in object position in (99e). In (99f), even though mo does not refer to a human entity in the sentence, it is left in the canonical position of the fronted nominal gbei ‘dog’. This shows that fronted animate objects require resumptive pronouns to fill the gap that is left behind when they are fronted. In examples (100b, d), the nouns kya ‘house’ and ͻpono ‘table’ are inanimate entities. Therefore there are no overt pronouns to refer back to them in the sentences. This shows that inanimate objects do not leave behind overt resumptive pronouns in their canonical positions when they are fronted for focus in Ɔkere. (100) a. Gbei a k t kya yo. dog DEF squat building side ‘The dog is squatting beside the building’ b. Kya a yo ne gbei a koto ______ House DEF side FOC dog DEF squat [e] ‘It is beside THE BUILDING that the dog is squatting.’ c. tã a hε ͻpono a so. Cloth DEF cover table DEF on ‘The cloth is covering the table’ d. Ɔpono a so ne εta᷉ a hε ____ Table DEF top FOC cloth DEF cover [e] ‘It is THE TABLE that the cloth is covering. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 91 Considering the discussion above, we can explain the ungrammaticality of (101a). Esi, being a fronted animate object must leave a resumptive pronoun in its canonical position to make the sentence grammatical. For this reason (101b) corrects (101a). (101) a. *Esi ne me dε᷉ ____ Esi FOC 1SG hit.COMPL [e ] ‘It is Esi I hit.’ b. Esi ne me dε᷉ mo. Esi FOC 1SG hit.COMPL 3SG ‘It is ESI that I hit.’ The case in Ɔkere is similar to what obtains in a Kwa language like Akan where there is always a resumptive pronoun which refers back to the fronted nominal. According to Saah (1992), if the focused element is inanimate there is no overt resumptive pronoun; the pronoun is null. However, it is overt if the referent is animate. Based on this, he posits that Akan has a null object pronoun which has inanimate reference, while there is always an overt object pronoun if it refers to an animate entity. The following examples confirm Saah’s observation. (102) a. Ɔbaa no na me huu no. Woman DEF FOC 1SG see.PST 3SG ‘It was the woman that I saw (her). (Saah 1992:228 ex. 20b) b. Adaka no na me huu-i [e] Box DEF FOC 1SG see.PST 3SG ‘It was the box that I saw (it).’ (Saah 1992:228 ex. 21b) University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 92 Considering examples (100 and 101), it is evident that the null object parameter Saah (1992) posits for Akan pertains in Ɔkere. 4.7.2 Content questions and resumptive pronouns Preposed content question phrases require resumptive pronouns in the clause to refer back to them in some Kwa languages. In Akan for instance, Saah (1988:23) posits that “whenever a wh-word/phrase is preposed, it does not create a gap in its original position in a sentence, rather, a pronoun is substituted for the preposed constituent in its original position.” The gap is always filled with the resumptive pronoun no if the referent is animate. On the contrary, a gap is left behind if the referent is inanimate. Saah’s (1988) observation in Akan is consistent with what obtains in Ɔkere, where there is a gap left behind when a content question word is preposed. The observation in Ɔkere is different from what occurs in Ewe and Ga (Ameka 2010). Ameka observes that in Ewe and Ga, there is a gap left in the rest of the sentence when a content question word is preposed. Let us explore the case in Ɔkere. See examples in (103). (103) a. Anei ne anyiεj a biakε moi a? Who FOC man DEF greet.COMPL 3SG QP ‘Who did the man greet?’ b. εntεi ka ntsuj a mo ase a? What lie water DEF POSS under QP ‘What is under the water?’ In example (103a), the pronoun mo that ends the clause is co-referential with ane because it is animate. In (103b) however, there is no resumptive pronoun University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 93 that is co-referential with the preposed content question word because mεntε does not require a referent since it is inanimate. Again in (103a), ane and mo are co-indexed to show that they are co-referential but in (103b), mɛntɛ cannot be co-indexed with any other pronoun in the sentence because it has no resumptive pronoun. 4.8 Other focus markers - Weakly emphatic morphemes Having identified na and de(ɛ) as focus markers in Akan, Boadi (1974:54) identifies other morphemes which also function as focus makers and calls them ‘weakly emphatic morphemes. These are nso ‘too’, ankasa ‘self’, ara ‘only’ and mpo ‘even’. He notes that “these morphemes can also be used to bring items into focus but do not define focused elements uniquely” (Boadi 1974:54). He also indicates that they can function as sentence modifiers and for that matter, can occur at sentence-final position; a function na does not perform. The Ɔkere morphemes nso ‘too/also’, ara ‘only/just’ and mpo ‘even’ behave in like manner. Even though they do not perform all the functions that ne performs, a sentence in which they occur contains both old and new information. In this section, I show the syntactic positions of the ‘weakly emphatic morphemes’ in a sentence and also show that ako ‘alone’ also fits in the category of ‘weakly emphatic morphemes. I will then discuss their pragmatic properties in chapter five. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 94 4.8.1 The additive marker nso The Ɔkere morpheme nso ‘also/too’ seems to perform the syntactic functions that the Akan morpheme nso performs. The Ɔkere nso occurs immediately after the constituent it modifies in a sentence. It modifies either an NP argument or a predicate. This can be seen in the following examples: (104) a. Kwame nso bͻ ɛ esimi a nko. Kwame also do.COMPL work DEF some ‘Kwame also did some of the work./Kwame also worked.’ b. Papa Larbi bɛ -bͻ ɛ ͻtͻkoa, Papa Larbi NEG-do.HAB nothing a-bɛ -d nso. 3SG-NEG-sleep.HAB too ‘Papa Larbi does nothing, he doesn’t sleep either.’ In (104a), nso occurs immediately after the NP Kwame, which functions as the subject in the sentence. The notion that ‘there is work to do’ is perceived as old information and Kwame’s contribution towards the work is perceived as the new information. Nso makes Kwame a partaker of the work since no one expects him to be part of it. In (104b), nso modifies bɛ d ‘he doesn’t sleep’ which is the predicate of the sentence. This tells the addressee that in addition to not doing anything, Papa Larbi has refused to sleep. For the function that nso performs in Akan, Amfo (2010) calls it an additive marker. 4.8.2 The scalar marker mpo Like nso, mpo has scope over NP arguments and the predicate of the sentence. In (104a), mpo has scope over the NP anyiɛ ‘man’. It shows that nobody else University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 95 did the calling, except the man. It occurs immediately after the elements over which it has scope. (105) a. Anyiɛ a mpo t é me nne. Man DEF even call.COMPL 1SG today ‘Even the man called me.’ b. Kofi lͻ ɛ paa, -bé-d kyinae mpo. Kofi sick very SG-NEG-able sit even ‘Kofi is very sick, he can’t even sit.’ In (105b), mpo has scope over the subordinate clause in the sentence. The old information is Kofi’s sickness and the new is the severity of the sickness. His inability to sit shows the severity of the sickness. He is sick to the point that he cannot do the least of things everybody can do, that is, sitting. 4.8.3 The marker ara Ara ‘only’ has continuity, simultaneity, restrictive and scalar functions in Ɔkere depending on the context. These functions are more of pragmatics, they will therefore be discussed in chapter five. Ara has scope over an NP in a sentence in Ɔkere as exemplified in example (106). (106) a. N-yirebi a ara bɛ -f ky fura PL- child DEF only FUT-sweep house a tɛ pɛɛ. DEF in all ‘It is only the children who will sweep the house’ b. N-yirebi a en-w r ara pɛ PL-child DEF COND-finish only as soon as mͻ wo-tre me. then 2SG-call 1SG ‘Call me as soon as the children finish.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 96 In (106a), ara occurs immediately after the NP nyirebi ‘children’. It singles out the category of persons who are supposed to do the sweeping. In (106b), it occurs immediately after the clause yirebi a en r which is an indication that it has scope over the clause it modifies. 4.8.4 The marker ako Ako ‘alone’ occurs immediately after an NP over which it has scope. It has a sense of restriction in a sentence. See the examples in (106): (107) a. Kwasi ako sɛ ntsu nɛ Kwasi alone fetch.HAB water give anyi-mkpɛɛbi a daa anyankye. man-old DEF every morning ‘Kwasi alone fetches water for the old man every morning.’ b.* Ama f nky ako Ama sweep.COMPL alone In (107a), ako occurs immediately after the NP Kwasi. Even though the emphasis is not strong, it is clear that Kwasi is the only one who fetches water for the old man. The presence of ako in sentence-final position renders the sentence ungrammatical. Example (107b) shows a situation where ako occurs clause-finally and causes the sentence to be ungrammatical. 4.9 Weakly emphatic morphemes with the focus marker ne Due to their weak nature in terms of focus, the weakly emphatic morphemes can occur with the focus marker ne to strengthen an emphasis. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 97 (108) a. Anyiɛ a mpo ne -t é me Man DEF even FOC 3SG-call.COMPL 1SG ‘It was even the man who called me.’ b. Ayirebi kͻ mͻ ara ne a-bɛ -bͻ ɛ child one DEM only FOC 3SG-FUT-do esimi a pɛɛ. work DEF all ‘It is only this child who will do all the chores.’ c. Kofi ako ne a-sɛ ntsu Kofi alone FOC 3SG-fetch.HAB water nɛ anyimkpɛɛbi a daa anyankye. give.HAB old man DEF every morning ‘It is only Kofi who fetches water for the old man’. Examples (108a-c) illustrate the weakly emphatic morphemes mpo, ara and ako occurring with the Ɔkere focus marker ne. In all three situations, the emphasis is stronger than when they (weakly emphatic markers) occur alone. There are instances where Ɔkere permits a combination of the weakly emphatic morphemes to co-occur in a sentence. Their functions combine for a stronger emphasis. (109) a. Wo ako ara ne wo-b -dé ɛ -bͻ ɛ . 2SG alone only FOC 2SG-FUT-able 3SG-do ‘You are the only one who can do it.’ b. N-yirebi a nso mpo bɛ -bɛ fura PL-child DEF also even FUT-come house alete mͻ. evening DEM ‘Even the children will also come home this evening’. In (109a) ako, ara and ne occur in the sentence to emphasize the addressee almost as the only one with the ability to do what the speaker expects. In University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 98 (109b), the presence of nso and mpo indicate inclusion and a kind of ranking, in that, what the speaker least expects may add up to his/her expectation. In some cases, the morpheme koraa ‘even’ may occur with nso and mpo in a sentence. This also shows emphasis and (110) is an illustration of this combination. (110) Wo se koraa nso mpo béw r awͻre POSS father even also even NEG-finish book a ɛkare. DEF reading ‘Even your father has not finished reading the book.’ The three morphemes are combined to strengthen an emphasis; the fact that the addressee’s father is the one reading the book but has not finished reading it. It is worth noting that the markers ara, nso, ako, mpo and koraa are common to both Akan and Ɔkere. They occur at similar positions and have similar uses in both languages. 4.10 Summary This chapter focused on the syntactic categories that are focused in Ɔkere clauses. From the exploration, it has been observed that ne is the focus marker in Ɔkere. Focus strategies employed in Ɔkere involves fronting of the focused element and placing the focus marker ne immediately after it. Clefting and pseudo-clefting are other strategies employed to show prominence in Ɔkere. It has been shown that all major syntactic categories can be focused. These are nouns/noun phrases, nominalized verbs, adverbs and predicative University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 99 adjectives. In the case of adverbs, temporal and locative adverbials are fronted for focus since they are basically nouns. Interestingly, fronted adjectives as well as nominalised verbs that do not have nominalizers are marked with high tone. Content question words can be fronted for focus as well in Ɔkere. They can also be in-situ depending on the argument they question. Subject NPs, whether animate or inanimate, require resumptive pronouns to refer back to them. Again, fronted animate object NPs require resumptive pronouns as referents to fill the gap that is left behind during the fronting process. Finally, there are other morphemes that can be used to show prominence in Ɔkere, apart from the focus marker ne. These are nso ‘also’/ ‘too’, mpo ‘even’ ara ‘only’ and ako ‘alone’. These morphemes sound like Akan morphemes. They may have been borrowed from Akan since they share almost the same functions with the Akan nso, mpo and ara. They occur after elements they modify. They occur after fronted elements and after elements in-situ. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 100 CHAPTER FIVE THE PRAG ATIC PROPERTIES OF FOCUS IN Ɔ ERE 5.0 Introduction Pragmatics plays a role in every discourse; the choice of words, for example, is dependent on what the speaker desires to present as new information in the discourse and the meaning he intends to convey to the addressee. Focus is, therefore, characterised as the ‘unpredictable’ or pragmatically ‘non- recoverable’ element in an utterance that turns it into an assertion (Lambrecht 1994:207). Lambrecht (1994) opines that focus is all about presupposition and assertion, in that, the former represents ‘old information’ and the latter ‘new information’. The new information is the purpose for which a speaker makes an utterance. Focused elements are highlighted in various ways. Some elements come with focus particles while others come with morphemes that signal focus. However, the pragmatics of focus may be expressed with or without a focus particle or a morpheme that signals focus. This chapter deals with information focus, that is, what the speaker intends to communicate and not its syntactic position (Kiss 1998). This is in line with Krifka’s (2006) assertion that the pragmatic uses of focus relates to the public communicative goals of the participants. The study also looks at the pragmatics of identificational focus as a result of the presence of cleft constituents and ako-phrase ‘only-phrase’ as identified by Kiss (1998). In the rest of this chapter, I discuss the pragmatics of focus elements and focus particles using Dik et al’s (1981) typology of focus functions. In section University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 101 5.1, I discuss the pragmatics of the focus marker ne. In section 5.2, I discuss the pragmatics of the weakly emphatic morpheme ako. The various interpretations of the morpheme ara are discussed in section 5.3. I discuss the pragmatics of the morpheme nso in section 5.4. The pragmatics of the morpheme mpo is discussed in section 5.5. In section 5.6, I discuss the scalar function of koraa. In 5.7, I discuss the pragmatics of focused elements. Finally, I discuss the pragmatics of content questions in section 5.8. 5.1 The pragmatics of the focus marker ne The Ɔkere focus marker ne can be used to serve completive, selective, and replacing functions. It can also serve the restrictive function when it combines with the morphemes ako and ara. Ne takes scope over constituents that are fronted for focus and it occurs immediately after the fronted elements as shown in example (111). (111) K t a ne Yaw tw Hat DEF FOC Yaw take.COMPL ‘It is THE HAT that Yaw took.’ In (111), the focused element koto ‘hat’ occurs in sentence-initial position and it is followed immediately by the focus marker ne. Ne takes scope over all major syntactic categories as discussed in chapter four (section 4.2). In the rest of this section I discuss the functions of ne. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 102 5.1.1 The completive function of Ɔkere ne. Following Dik et al (1981), Amfo (2010:198) notes that “completive focus is when the focus information fills a gap in the pragmatic information of the addressee”. In her view, an answer to a content question can best be described as having a completive focus function. This is the case in Ɔkere. Consider examples in (112) and (113): (112) Ane d kɛ tegyi bo ayi a Who cook.COMPL food be-located tree DEF mo ase a? POSS under QP ‘Who cooked under the tree?’ (113) Esi d kɛ tegyi bo ayi a Esi cook-COMPL food be.located tree DEF mo ase. POSS under. ‘Esi cooked under the tree.’ In (112) an action (cooking) has been performed at an unauthorised place. The speaker wants to know who actually did the cooking. Questioning the performer of the act creates a gap and (113) fills it by naming the person who did the cooking under the tree. Again, (114) fills the gap in (115) if the speaker wants to know where Esi cooked, that is, it mentions exactly where the cooking took place. (115) Ɔnofo ne Esi dankɛ tegyi a? Where FOC Esi cook.COMPL food DEF ‘Where did Esi cook?’ (115) Ayi a mo ase ne Esi d kɛ Tree DEF POSS under FOC Esi cook.COMP University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 103 tegyi a. food DEF ‘It is under THE TREE that Esi cooked.’ The speaker gets curious again; she wants to know what exactly Esi cooked under the tree in (116) and the addressee fills the gap with (117) by saying it is oburodwo ‘plantain.’ (116) Mɛntɛ ne Esi dankɛ? what FOC Esi cook.COMPL ‘What did Esi cook? (117) Oburodwo ne Esi dankɛ. Plantain FOC Esi cook.COMPL ‘It was PLANTAIN that Esi cooked.’ In (112) and (116) above the speaker presupposes that somebody cooked something under the tree but s/he does not know the person and what the person cooked. However, in (114), the person is known but it is the location of the cooking that is not known. In all these situations, it is obvious that there is a gap in the speaker’s knowledge of the state of affairs. Hence, s/he does not make any guess. It is the addressee’s answer that fills the gap. The speaker’s knowledge about the cooking and all the answers s/he gets confirms Lambrecht’s (1994) assertion that presupposition represents ‘old information’ whereas assertion represents ‘new information’. Whatever assumption that is perceived in the speaker’s mind is cleared by the addressee’s answer which is the ‘new information’. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 104 5.1.2 The focus marker ne as a selective marker The focus marker ne can perform a selective function in Ɔkere. In this use, a selection is made out of a whole lot of options as mentioned in chapter one (section 1.9.6). The selective function of ne is shown in example (118). (118) Fura ne me-wé house FOC 1SG-go.COMPL ‘It is HOME that I went.’ Here ne has a selective function. As the definition indicates, a choice is made out of at least two potential targets of choice. Thus, given two possible options, the one which is not chosen is explicitly or implicitly rejected. In example (118), fura ‘house’ is chosen over all the other places where the speaker could have gone. Therefore the sentence could be rendered as “It is home [and nowhere else but home] that I went”. Similar patterns of selection are observable in (119) and (120). (119) ta᷉ ne anumude kr cloth FOC elders like ‘It is CLOTH that elders like.’ (120) Sukuu ne ayirebi a w . School FOC child DEF go.PROG ‘It is SCHOOL that the child is going.’ In (119) and (120), ɛta ‘cloth’ and sukuu ‘school’ are focused. The speaker in (119) might have been telling an addressee what adults like wearing most. S/he observes that ɛta is the most liked thing by adults. The speaker in (120) also University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 105 chooses sukuu over any other possible place where ayirebi a ‘the child’ is going to. These propositions give us an indication that the addressees could have had other possible choices in mind but the speaker’s choice surpasses those possible choices. In both situations, it can be seen that the other possible places have been ignored even though they are not mentioned. That is, they are implicitly rejected. Example (119) can be rendered as (121) to tell the addressee that ntaade has been explicitly ignored. (121) ta ne anumude kre bɛɛde ntaade. Cloth FOC elders like.HAB not dress ‘It is CLOTH that elders like not dress. In Akan, Boadi (1974:7) asserts that “a constituent to which na is attached becomes the focus of the message being transmitted and is interpreted as additional information”. The na-constituent becomes the only information that a speaker would want an addressee to hear. Similarly, ne-constituent carries the only information that is put across in Ɔkere, as shown in examples (118) to (121) above. 5.1.3 The replacing function of ne The replacing function of ne is best seen in cases where new information contradicts old information in an utterance. The role of the new information is to replace the old information. Question and answer pairs can be employed to describe the replacing function of ne. The answer to a question should be in the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 106 negative to show the contradiction. The negative marker daabi ‘no’ is usually needed to show the contradiction in the answer. (122) Kofi b ɛyi a? Kofi break-COMPL stick QP ‘Did Kofi break the stick?’ (123) Daabi, abie a ne Kofi bia. No chair DEF FOC Kofi break-COMPL ‘No, it is THE CHAIR that Kofi broke’ (124) Mante dɛ᷉ anyimkpɛɛbi a? Mante hit-COMPL old man QP ‘Did Mante hit the old man?’ (125) Daabi, anyemi a ne Mante No, boy DEF FOC Mante dɛ᷉ mo. hit-COMPL 3SG ‘No, it is THE BOY that Mante hit.’ In example (123) the addressee corrects a preconceived idea which the speaker has in (122). The addressee does this by responding in the negative with the use of daabi ‘no’ which is then followed by the new information. There is a total cancellation of old information and a complete replacement. Therefore, the presupposed idea that Kofi broke the stick has been replaced by the fact that Kofi broke a chair. A similar situation occurs in (124). There is the notion that Mante hit the old man. Example (125) contradicts this notion and completely replaces it with the information that it is the boy [and not the old man] that Mante hit. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 107 5.2 The pragmatics of ako As shown in chapter four (section 4.8.4), ako is one of the weak emphatic morphemes in Ɔkere that co-occur with the focus marker ne. The presence of the focus markers ne and ako can be said to be stronger where ako precedes ne in an utterance. As discussed in chapter four (section 4.8.4) the focus feature of the weakly emphatic morphemes is not so strong but here, ne (with its stronger focus features) occurs with ako and their features combine for stronger emphasis. Exclusive meaning is expressed in the use of the markers ne and ako. In example (126), these two markers are present and lay more emphasis on the fact that it is only food that the woman sells. This means that apart from food, the woman does not sell any other thing. (126) Tegyi ako ne akye a f . Food only FOC woman DEF sell.HAB ‘It is only FOOD that the woman sells.’ This presupposes that there is an earlier assumption that the woman sells something in addition to food. However, the speaker corrects this assumption by categorically stating that it is only food that the woman sells. There is a similar situation in (127). This was taped from a conversation that ensued between two of my consultants. One was telling the other what Kofi, a boy who lives in her house, does every morning before he goes to school. (127) a. Kofi ɛn-w s anyankye a, mo Kofi COND-wake.HAB morning SUBC 3SG ako ne a-f nky fura a tɛ only FOC 3SG-sweep.HAB house DEF inside pɛɛ ɛntɛ ne a-w sukuu. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 108 all before CONN 3SG-go.HAB school ‘When Kofi wakes up in the morning, it is only HE who sweeps the whole house before he goes to school.’ In example (127) above, mo ‘him’ is made prominent and refers to Kofi. The speaker tries to clear the doubt about who Kofi sweeps the house with in the morning. It is made known to the addressee that Kofi sweeps the house all alone before going to school in the morning. This suggests that Kofi goes to school quite late and the addressee tries to find the reason for his lateness, hence the utterance. Ako has the tendency to occur alone in an utterance. The absence of ne does not affect the restrictive nature of ako in any way in such situations. An ako- constituent singles out an entity in an utterance, telling an addressee that it is the only entity that is prominent. The primary function of ako in (126) is a modifier of tegyi ‘food’, where it indicates the uniqueness of the item it modifies. It is this signalling of the uniqueness of tegyi which combines with the focus marker to show strong exclusivity. The example in (128) exemplifies the occurrence of ako without the focus marker ne. (128) Kwame ako w sukuu daa anyankye. Kwame only go.HAB sukuu every morning ‘Kofi goes to school alone every morning.’ The speaker, in the utterance above is a gentleman who was telling a friend about how a four-year-old boy in his neighbourhood goes to school every morning. He expresses worry about the fact that Kwame goes to school alone. The little boy needs to be taken to school by an adult but it seems nobody cares University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 109 about how he goes to school. He struggles to cross a busy road every morning and this is not safe. It is obvious that although ako occurs without ne in the sentence yet there is the realization that Kwame is the object of discussion here. It has been mentioned in section 5.1 that ne has a restrictive function. The restrictive function of ne is best seen in example (127) where it occurs with ako. Ako without ne does not express restrictive function in Ɔkere. Consider example (129): (129) Kofi ɛn-woso anyankye a, Kofi COND-wake.HAB morning SUBC mo ako fonkye fura a tɛ pɛɛ ɛntɛ 3SG only sweep-HAB house DEF inside all before ne a we sukuu. CONN 3SG go.HAB school ‘When Kofi wakes up in the morning, HE alone sweeps them whole house before he goes to school.’ In (129) the contextual effect is not as strong as (127) because of the absence of the focus marker ne. Ne with ako makes the emphasis stronger and restrictive. In section 5.3, the restrictive function of ne is shown again where it occurs with ara. 5.3 The pragmatics of ara The morpheme ara expresses different meanings depending on the context of an utterance in Ɔkere. It can express simultaneity, contiguity, continuity and also function as a scalar marker. It also has a restrictive interpretation when it combines with ne. In the following subsections, I will discuss the various functions of ara. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 110 5.3.1 The simultaneous use of ara In Ɔkere ara can be used to indicate simultaneity. There must be two temporal activities or events involved in this variety of meaning and they must occur at the same time. Let us see this example: (130) a. ne w r bere ɛtɛ Adwoa 1PL finish.COMPL time that Adwoa w r ara pɛ. finish.COMPL just exact ‘We finished exactly when Adwoa finished.’ b. Pɛbi fo fura bere ɛtɛ Asare Pɛbi reach.COMPL house time that Asare w r ɛfonkye ara pɛ. finish.COMPL sweeping just that ‘Pɛbi got home exactly when Asare finished sweeping.’ Examples (129a and b) express two events occurring at the same time. In (130a) the scope of ara is over the second clause ‘when Adwoa finished’, which is the focused element. The group’s action and that of Adwoa ended simultaneously. sare’s act of sweeping in (130b) ended immediately Pɛbi got home. The simultaneity of the activitites in both examples is expressed by ara. 5.3.2 The temporal contiguity interpretation of ara The temporal contiguity interpretation of ara can be seen in our analysis of example (131). We see that ara expresses a situation where two events or actions occur almost at the same time. One occurs just before the other. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 111 (131) a. ne wure mprɛe ara ɛntɛ ne 1PL finish.COMPL little just before CONN Esi bɛ. Esi come-COMPL ‘We finished just before Esi came.’ b. Abobi a di ᷉ ayirebi a mprɛe ara insect DEF bite.COMPL child DEF little just ɛntɛ ne mo adamfo a h mo. before CONN POSS friend DEF see.COMPL 3SG ‘The animal bit the child just before his friend saw him.’ In (131a), the group’s activity did not end at exactly the time Esi’s activity ended. The group’s activity ended a little earlier than Esi’s. In example (131b) the act of seeing was done just after the insect bit the child. The temporal contiguity interpretation of ara communicates the different times the two events ended in both examples. This interpretation of ara is similar to what obtains in Akan (Amfo 2010). 5.3.3 The continuity interpretation of ara Continuity refers to a situation where something continues for a long period of time without being changed or stopped. Continuity can sometimes be expressed with the use of the marker ara in Ɔkere. Continuity interpretation of ara may be expressed in continuous events, attitude, behaviour, etc. In example (132), Kwaw’s behaviour is seen as one that does not please his family at all but he is not ready to change his behaviour. This causes his uncle to burst out one day with the utterance in (132). (132) Eei! ɛtɛ ɛ-ye Kwaw bɛ-bͻɛ a, mo ara EXC thing 3PL-say Kwaw NEG-do SUB.C 3SG just University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 112 ne a-ye a-bɛ -bͻ ɛ. Mɛntɛ se ᷉sɛ᷉ koraa de mͻ? FOC 3SG-say 3SG-FUT-do what person Even be this ‘Eei! What Kwaw has been asked not to do, that is exactly what he does. What kind of a person is this?’/‘Kwaw always does what he has been asked not to do. What manner of a person is this?’ In this construction ara has scope over the pronoun mo which refers to ɛtɛ ‘what’ [the unacceptable behaviour of Kwaw]. Thus ara expresses the unchanging attitude of Kwaw. In example (133), ara expresses the continuous manner in which Oforiwa washed. It could be deduced from the utterance that Oforiwa rather aimed at finishing the soap than washing the dress. The act of washing did not end, it continued till the soap got finished. Even though ara occurs after the NP ataade kͻ mͻ ‘this one dress’, the focus in this utterance is on the act of washing. (133) Oforiwa fͻ ataade kͻ mͻ ara ͻnfo Oforiwa wash-COMPL dress one DEM just till bere ɛtɛ gyaare a pɛɛ tɛ᷉. time that soap DEF all finish-COMPL ‘Ofori washed this dress until all the soap got finished.’ 5.3.4 The restrictive interpretation of ara Apart from ne and ako, ara is another marker that expresses restriction. Ara singles out new information in an utterance in Ɔkere. The examples below confirm its restrictive nature: University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 113 (134) Ama bɛ -k s ɛtɛ, tegyi ara ne a-gyi. Ama NEG-learn.HAB thing food just FOC 3SG-eat.HAB ‘Ama does not study, all she does is to eat.’ (135) Ama bɛ -k s ɛtɛ, tegyi ako ara ne a-gyi. Ama NEG-learn thing food only just FOC 3SG-eat.HAB ‘Ama does not study, the only thing she does is to eat.’ In example (134), ara occurs with ne to show that even though Ama is expected to combine both eating and studying, she has singled out eating. Here, the combination of ne and ara portray a stronger restriction. The speaker is considered to be someone who knows Ama very well and so making such an utterance brings out Ama’s real behaviour. In (135), ara occurs between ako and ne to lay emphasis on the truthfulness of the utterance. This is the only situation in which ara occurs with ako. Here, the restrictive nature of ara is much more stronger since it occurs with ako and ne. 5.3.5 Ara as a scalar marker A marker has a scalar function when its use expresses rating from top to bottom. The full range of scalar interpretations includes quantity, numerals, size, distance, situation, etc. Ara possesses all the scalar qualities in Ɔkere. It has scope over an entity evaluated as minimal. Consider the following example: (136) Oni a, dodobi mͻ ara ne a-nɛ me. Meat DEF small DEF just FOC 3SG-give.COMPL 1SG ‘The meat, it is just a small portion that s/he gave me.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 114 In example (136), the speaker seems to expect a bigger portion of the ‘meat’ but s/he was given just a small portion of it. S/he does not seem to be satisfied with what was given. The shearer might have taken a bigger portion. When the two are ranked, the speaker’s portion will be at the bottom of the scale on which the ranking is done. The scalar qualities of ara is able to put speaker’s portion of meat at the bottom of the scale. The Akan morpheme ara has similar interpretations as observed by Amfo (2010). 5.4 The pragmatics of the additive marker nso The morpheme nso has the tendency to perform an expanding or additive function in Ɔkere. The expanding function is seen when the focus constituent is meant to add on to a previously given (presupposed) information (Amfo 2010:199). In other words, it is aimed at explaining the given information in a discourse. In Ɔkere, the weakly emphatic morpheme nso ‘also/ too/as well’ can perform the expanding function. Let us explore the use of nso in the following examples. (137) Bɛɛde tegyi ako ne akye a fe, not food only FOC woman DEF sell.HAB a-fe ntsu nso 3SG sell.HAB water also ‘The woman does not sell only food, she sells water as well.’ (138) Yaw nɛmͻ Ama w sukuu. ɛmo kase awͻre ɛ-kare Yaw CONN Ama go-HAB school 3PL learn book NOML-read nɛmͻ a-kyerɛw. Ɛmo kase le e-twu nso. CONN NOML-write. 3PL learn song NOML-sing also ‘Yaw and Ama go to school. They learn to read and write. They also learn to sing.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 115 In order to give additional information, a focused constituent needs to be expanded. In example (137), the use of nso does not show restriction. However for the speaker to add bɛɛde ‘not’ means there is more to add, and so it is obvious that akye ‘the woman’ does not sell only food’. Bɛɛde expresses negation but here it cancels the notion that the womwn sells only food. This makes way for an additive particle to add to the focus set. In effect, nso ‘as well’ signals the additional information that she sells ntsu ‘water’ as well. In both situations, it could be realised that there has been an expansion of information as a result of the use of nso. That is, even though there is an assumption that it is only food that the woman sells in example (137), the speaker clears the air by adding additional information by saying “she sells water as well”. Again in example (138), apart from learning to read and write, Yaw and Ama learn to sing as well. ‘Singing’ is an additional activity that the children learn at school. Boadi (1974) and Amfo (2010) call nso and mpo inclusive markers in Akan. Amfo explores their inclusive nature and calls them additive and scalar markers respectively. Ɔkere nso ‘also’ has additive function. It could be observed in examples (137) and (138) that there is an addition to something that is already known. Mpo will be explored in the next section. 5.5 The scalar marker mpo The morpheme mpo ‘even’ can also signal focus in Ɔkere. Even though it is a weakly emphatic morpheme an mpo-utterance shows prominence. Because the items picked out by an mpo-utterance in Akan is said to be rateable on a scale. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 116 Amfo (2010:207) argues that the Akan equivalent of the form mpo functions as a scalar marker. Ɔkere has a similar situation where a proposition containing mpo can be found at the bottom of a scale. In this section, I discuss the scalar function of mpo in Ɔkere. The following examples illustrate the use of the morpheme mpo. (139) Ama mpo bisɛ anyɛmi a ɛtɛ Ama even ask.COMPL boy DEF what an-twu bo kya a tɛ. 3SG-take.COMPL be room DEF inside ‘Ama even asked the boy what he took from the room.’ (140) Larbi bͻɛ esimi a pɛɛ Kwasi mpo Larbi do.COMPL work DEF all Kwasi even a-bɛ-n-tre mo. 3SG-NEG-PERF-call 3SG ‘Larbi did all the work, he did not even call Kwasi.’ In examples (139) and (140), some kind of surprise is expressed with the use of mpo. In (139), a boy entered a room in a house unnoticed. People in the house seemed to be afraid of him so no one had the courage to question him. Everyone asked what he took from the room, including Ama who was the least expected to do that probably due to the fact that she might be weaker than all the rest. She may also be the youngest of all and so it may sound surprising for her to do that.Even though Ama is the least expected to question the boy, in (139), she was the one who did. It could be noticed that she was not the only one who saw the boy but she was the one who asked him what he took from the room, although she is the least expected to have questioned the boy on the scale of candidates for questioning the boy. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 117 A similar situation occurs in (140), there were several people to help Larbi do his work. He ignored all of them including Kwasi. Kwasi is someone he usually works with, but this time, Kwasi was among those he ignored, which is quite surprising. Scaling the people around, the last person to be ignored is Kwasi, but that was exactly what Larbi did. Again, in example (141) below, putting the people that are likely not to be invited by Siɛbɛ on a scale, her friends will be at the bottom of the scale. Thus, if Siɛbɛ will not invite anyone to eat with her, her friends will be the most unlikely. Yet she does not invite even her friends.4 It is worth noting that the use of mpo denotes surprise in Ɔkere. (141) Siɛbɛ en-nyɛ tegyi a, a-bɛ-tre asokoa, Siɛbɛ COND-get food DEF 3SG-NEG-call anybody mo n-namfo mpo a bɛ-tre ɛmo. POSS PL-friend even 3SG NEG-call 3SG ‘When Siɛbɛ gets food she does not invite anyone, not even her friends.’ 5.5.1 Mpo with ne Mpo ‘even’ like nso can be combined with ne where ne precedes mpo to strengthen emphasis in an utterance. Since ne is a focus marker and mpo, a weakly emphatic morpheme, the two found in succession in a sentence demonstrates prominence. Consider the illustrations in examples (142) and (143): 4 It is a norm in Ghana to invite people around when one gets food to eat. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 118 (142) Budu mpo ne me tre mo ne Budu even FOC 1SG call.COMPL 3SG CONN a-be-n-ku ayi a nɛ me. 3SG-come-PERF-cut tree DEF give 1SG ‘It was even Budu that I called to cut the tree for me.’ (143) Anyiɛ a mpo ne a kyerɛw Kofi nyɛ. Man DEF even FOC 3SG write Kofi name ‘It was even the man who wrote Kofi’s name.’ Budu and anyɛ a ‘the man’ are immediately followed by mpo and ne to show the degree of prominence. The level of truth is also clear in both sentences. In example (142), it is evident that the speaker needed someone to cut the tree, and Budu is the only one who was called to do that. The presence of mpo also shows that the speaker had been looking for someone to help him cut the tree. It was Budu who finally came to his aid. This is to say that no other person except Budu came to help cut the tree. In this example, while the focus particle provides new information, the mpo particle identifies the item in focus as the least expected member of the set of possible actors to be picked up. Therefore this means that Budu was least expected to cut the tree, hence the particle mpo. Similarly, in example (143), anyiɛ is presented as the only one who wrote Kofi’s name. Any other person could have done that but nobody did it except ‘the man’. What needed to be done was to have Kofi’s name written and ‘the man’ did exactly that. 5.6 The scalar function of koraa Koraa ‘even’ has features of weakly emphatic morphemes. Like mpo, when a koraa-utterance is rated on a scale it can be found at the bottom. Example (144) expresses the scalar function of koraa. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 119 (144) a. Kofi koraa bɛ to. Kofi even come.COMPL here ‘Even Kofi came here.’ b. Sonkyi bɛ-kase ɛtɛ koraa Sonkyi NEG-learn thing at all ‘Sonkyi does not study at all.’ In (144), koraa has scope over Kofi. Though the emphasis is not so strong, there is an assumption that Kofi was least expected to be ‘here’. Koraa has a different interpretation when it serves as a clause modifier. In (144b), it is interpreted as ‘at all’ and it portrays Sonkyi’s undesirable attitude towards learning. The presence of koraa in (144a) and (144b) encode scalar function and undesirability respectively. 5.6.1 Koraa with other weakly emphatic morphemes There are instances where koraa ‘even’ combines with mpo even though the two morphemes express about the same meaning. Example (145) illustrates the occurrence of koraa and mpo in an utterance. (145) Siɛbɛ en-nya tegyi a, -bɛ -tr asokoa, mo Siɛbɛ COND-get food SUBC 3SG-NEG-call anybody POSS n-namfo koraa mpo -bɛ -tr ɛmo. PL-friends even even 3SG-NEG-call 3SG ‘When Siɛbɛ gets food she does not invite anyone, not even HER FRIENDS.’ The occurrence of koraa ‘even’ lays more emphasis on the fact that Siɛbɛ does not invite her friends.5 It is worth noting that the quantity of food she takes is 5 It shows the extent to which she takes seriously the Ghanaian maxim “chop time no friend”. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 120 not mentioned, but inviting one’s friends may not depend on the quantity. Koraa expresses a complete or total truth when used in an utterance like (145). (146) Yaw koraa mpo bɛ to. Yaw even even come.COMPL here ‘Even YAW came here.’ It is a fact that Yaw came and the speaker is very confident in what he or she is saying. The speaker’s assertion about Yaw’s appearance cannot be doubted in any way. In order to strengthen an emphasis, koraa, nso and mpo can be combined in an utterance. The position of each of them is not fix. (147) Akɛsini mͻ koraa nso mpo, mɛntɛ young lady DEM even also even what ne a-nɛ-bͻɛ a? FOC 3SG-PROG-do QP ‘What at all is this lady also doing?’ (148) Yaw nso koraa mpo bɛ to enyede. Yaw also even even come.COMPL here yesterday ‘Even Yaw also came here yesterday.’ (149) Yaw mpo koraa nso bɛ to enyede. Yaw even even also come.COMPL here yesterday ‘Even YAW also came here yesterday.’ Here, there is a combination of koraa, nso and mpo. These markers still perform the various functions just as though they are used as individual words. In (147) and (148), akɛsini ‘lady’ and Yaw are least expected to do what they did, yet they are counted among those who perform the various acts. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 121 Example (147) was recorded in a taxi during one of my trips to Abiriw, where I did my data collection. There was this young lady who was singing loudly along the music that was being played in the taxi. The speaker, a fellow occupant of the taxi, who least expected the lady to put up such behaviour, suddenly bursts out with the utterance in (147) to show her dissatisfaction with the lady who was singing’s behaviour. A similar situation occurs in example (148) where Yaw, is counted among those who went to the house of one of my informants, Larbi, in his absence. Even though they are friends Yaw was not expected to be there at that time of the day and so when Larbi’s sister informed him by uttering (148), he expressed surprise. Realizing her brother was surprised, she uttered (149). In all three situations, even though the morphemes koraa, mpo and nso do not occur in the same order, it does not affect the meaning in any way. 5.7 The Pragmatics of some Focused Elements Focused elements have some meanings attached to them depending on the particular syntactic category that is focused in Ɔkere. In this section, I discuss the pragmatics of focused NPs, adverbs, adjectives and nominalised verbs. 5.7.1 The pragmatics of focused NPs Emphasis is laid on focused NPs to show prominence in Ɔkere. The entity that performs an action or undergoes the consequence of an action is what the speaker wants the addressee to know. For instance, in example (144) below, all that the speaker wants the addressee to know is the one who was beaten by Kofi. This is exactly what the speaker provides in this utterance: University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 122 (150) Ama ne Kofi dɛ᷉ mo. Ama FOC Kofi hit-COMPL 3SG ‘It is AMA that Kofi hit.’ Ama is the one who suffers the action performed by Kofi. Example (150) presupposes that Kofi hit someone and that someone is no other person than Ama. Somebody else, apart from Ama, could also have suffered the action but the assertion is that Ama is the particular and the only person who suffered the action Kofi performed. 5.7.2 The pragmatics of focused adverbs and adjectives Adverbs and adjectives that are fronted also have interesting pragmatic effect in utterances. Consider the examples in (151-153). (151) To ne enyede akye a fͻ ntebi a. Her FOC yesterday woman DEF wash-COMPL things DEF ‘It is HERE that yesterday the woman washed. (152) Enyede ne akye a fͻ ntebi bo to. Yesterday FOC woman DEF wash things be here ‘It was YESTERDAY that the woman washed her things’ (153) Ɔfeɛw ne ɛta mͻ bo. Beautiful FOC cloth DEM be ‘BEAUTIFUL this cloth is.’ (This cloth is beautiful.) In examples (151) and (152), the place and time (day) of an event are what the speakers intend to communicate as new information to the addressee. In both propositions, the speakers try as much as possible to provide such vital information. In example (153), it is the ‘beauty’ of the cloth that the speaker University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 123 wants the addressee to know. When asked why an adjective or adverb should be fronted, speakers of the language said this is done to express the degree or state of an object, thus example (153) tells an addressee that words cannot express the beauty of the cloth; the ‘beauty’ is beyond description. Therefore when adjectives and adverbs are fronted, the purpose is to tell the addressee that something is beyond description. 5.7.3 The pragmatics of nominalised verb fronting Nominalised verbs are fronted for a purpose in Ɔkere. In (154), ɛkprakye ‘vomiting’ is presented as what Ohenewa did. That is what the speaker presents. In (155), ‘reading’ and nothing apart from ‘reading’ is what is presented as an act Aku performed. Fronting the acts of ‘vomiting’ and ‘reading’ tells the addressee how emotional the speakers are because they are said with emotion. In (154) and (155), the speakers speak with emotions for the purpose of achieving a contextual effect. The purpose is to communicate to the addressee that ‘this is what I want to put across’. (154) -kprakye ne Ohenewa kprakye bo kya tɛ. NOM-vomit FOC Ohenewa vomit be room in ‘VOMITING is what he/she did in the room.’ (155) -kare ne Aku kare awͻre a. NOM-read FOC Aku read book DEF ‘He/she read the book.’ Nominalised verb fronting, according to Ɔkere speakers, is associated with attitude or emotions, that is, the manner in which nominalised verb fronting is University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 124 expressed. Nominalised verb fronting is normally associated with rudeness in the language. An angered addressee may give an answer like (154) and (155) to a speaker’s question even when the question is one without emotions. Better still, if the addressee is not angry, if the answer comes with nominalised verb fronting, it expresses rudeness. 4.8 The Pragmatics of Content Questions A content question, as defined in chapter four section 4.6, is one that seeks information in order to fill a communication gap. Content question words that refer to animate and human entities are differentiated from those that refer to animate but non-human and inanimate objects. This suggests that animacy reference is observed in Ɔkere. For instance the question word ane ‘who’ and the plural form ɛmaade ‘who’ have human entities as referents while mɛntɛ ‘what’ has inanimate entities as referents. The following examples illustrate this: Let us examine this scenario, Yaw goes to the stream to fetch water and falls down while returning home. He comes home crying without bringing the bucket of water. His mother, who had gone to the market, comes to hear what has happened. She would want to know the one who brought the bucket of water home. She then poses the question in example (156). Later on, she realizes that the water has been poured away so she poses the question in (157). In both situations, ane is used without taking into consideration who the persons involved could be. However, in (158) mɛntɛ questions an inanimate object, that is, the ‘thing’ that is lying on the mat. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 125 (156) Ane sorɛ ntsu a bɛ fura? Who carry.COMPL water DEF come.COMPL house ‘Who carried the water home?’ (157) Ane kyɛkerɛ ntsu a ͻkye a? who pour.COMPL water DEF away QP ‘Who poured the water away?’ (158) Mɛntɛ ka ᷉ ɛdeetɛ a so a? What lie mat DEF on QP ‘What is lying on the mat?’ As noted by Saah (1997) and Akrofi Ansah (2010), focused content questions in Akan and Lɛtɛ are more emphatic, particularly when they are fronted (section 4.6). In the same way, in Ɔkere, focus content questions are more emphatic and this is what matters to speakers. See example (159). (159) Mɛntɛ ne ɛ n k s bo sukuu nne? What FOC 2PL learn.COMPL be school today ‘What did you learn at school today?’ By using mɛntɛ, the speaker is more particular about what the addressees learnt at school in example (159). The addressee answers by uttering (160). It tells what they learnt, that is, reading and writing. (159) presupposes that the speaker knows that the addressees have been going to school to learn something every day. He/she does not know what they learnt that day and wanted to know. (160) ne k s ɛtɛ kare nɛmͻ mo ɛkyerɛw. 2PL learn-COMPL thing read CONN POSS write ‘We learnt to read and write.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 126 Marfo and Bodomo (2005:195) assert that content questions are inherently focus-marked and that they do not need to be assigned focus. This follows their claim that “a content question holds the core information profile of a construction within which it appears” (Marfo and Bodomo 2005:194). This assertion is clearly observed in Ɔkere where content questions referring to persons occur without the focus marker ne. Consider the following examples in (161) and (162), where ane ‘who’ (singular) and ɛmaade ‘who’ (plural) refer to persons: (161) Ane bɛ -mͻ akrɛni a nɛ me? Who FUT-kill fowl DEF give 1SG ‘Who will kill the fowl for me? (162) maade né-b r bo ta a? who.PL PROG-talk be there QP ‘Who are those talking there?’ Even though content questions are focused in the language, there are no focus particles. These examples confirm Marfo and Bodomo’s (2005) assertion that content questions do not need to be assigned focus due to the fact that they are inherently focus marked. A similar situation is observed by Akrofi Ansah (2010) in Lɛtɛ. 5.9 The morpheme le Ne has been identified as the main morpheme that signals focus in Ɔkere. Other morphemes like nso, mpo, etc also signal information. Another morpheme that has information signalling features is the morpheme le. This morpheme can be University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 127 interpreted as ‘as for’. Unlike the marker ne, le has varied syntactic positions. It occurs after major syntactic categories that are meant to be prominent. Its scope may also be over a constituent with which it occurs within a clause. It may also serve as a clause modifier in cases where it modifies a clause. Unlike its equivalent Akan de (Boadi 1974), it is an exclusive marker. In (163a) and (163b) the prominence of Brenya and yirebi mͻ ‘this child’ is caused by the presence of le. For lack of a better expression it will be glossed IA (Information Alert). (163) a. Brenya le a-be-gyi hu. Brenya IA 3SG-FUT-eat fufu ‘As for Brenya, he will eat fufu.’ b. Ayirebi mͻ le mͻ-se kre mͻ ese Child DEM IA POSS-father like.HAB POSS matter ‘As for this child, his father likes him.’ Exclusivity is seen in both cases. Example (163a) may be interpreted as ‘if others will eat something else, as for Brenya he will eat fufu’. This presupposes that fufu is not the only available food and moreover, there are other people who are supposed to eat. If they decide to eat anything else Brenya will be an exception. In (163b), the speaker is able to single out a particular child whose father is fond of. Pragmatically, it is presupposed that the father has other children but for reasons best known to him, he is fond of only one. (164) Kofi bɛ-kare awͻre a le nso Kofi FUT-read book DEF IA but a-bɛɛ-kare mo kͻse. 3SG-NEG-read 3SG well. ‘Kofi will read the book though but he will not read it well.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 128 According to Boadi (1974), de is an inclusive focus marker meanwhile Amfo (2010) has a different view with regards to this marker. From the above examples, we can say that le does not exhibit contrast. Rather, it singles out and shows exclusion. Looking at the various syntactic positions of the marker le, its real function is not certain (as to whether it is a focus marker or a topic marker). However, this will not be discussed further since the focus of this study is on focus construction. 5.10 Summary This chapter focuses mainly on the pragmatics of focus particles and focused elements in Ɔkere. Having explored the data, it is observed that focus marking is pragmatically controlled in Ɔkere, just like in all other languages. It is worth noting that the focus particle ne together with other particles perform various functions to contribute to the richness of the language. The pragmatics of focus marking goes with presupposition and assertion. The focus particle ne, as an exclusive focus marker, performs completive and selective functions. It also combines with the morphemes ako and ara to perform restrictive function even though ako and ara can perform the restrictive function without ne. It is realized that ara may have simultaneity, continuity and scalar interpretations apart from the restrictive function. Nso and mpo, as inclusive markers, serve additive and scalar functions respectively. Mpo achieves emphasis with and without the focus marker ne and sometimes nso depending on the context. Even though major syntactic elements are focused for various purposes, the case of nominalised verb is exceptional. Focused nominalised verbs are University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 129 associated with rudeness. Content questions are also focused to nullify, correct or confirm earlier assumptions made by an addressee. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 130 CHAPTER SIX CONCLUSION 6.0 Introduction In this thesis I study the formation and pragmatic properties of focus constructions in Ɔkere, a Hill Guan language. The main objective of the study was to identify the focus marker(s), the syntactic distribution of the focus marker(s), the various focus strategies employed, the various constituents that are focused and the pragmatic properties of the focus marker(s) in the language. In this chapter, I present a summary of the findings of all the discussions concerning focus construction. The subsequent sections present a summary of discussion (6.1), a summary of the findings (6.2), recommendations for further study on the language (6.3) and conclusion of the study (6.4). 6.1 Summary of chapters In chapter one, a general overview of the study was presented. A background of the study was discussed and in the discussion, it was realized that focus construction is a sub-set of information structure. The reason for which the study was conducted is stated, that is, to study focus constructions in Ɔkere which had not been previously studied. A brief historical background of the people of Ɔkere and the language are studied in this chapter. It was observed that Ɔkere refers to both the language and the people. It was also realized that the people of Ɔkere are highly bilingual. However, non-natives refer to both the language and the people as Kyerepong. In this chapter, research questions University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 131 and objectives guiding the study are outlined. The scope, significance of the study and the methodology that is adopted for the study have also been stated in this chapter. In chapter two, various works relating to this study are reviewed. These include both Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian (both African and non-African) literature on focus construction in particular and information structure in general. Since the study is purely descriptive, little is said concerning the theoretical approach guiding the study. In chapter three, a brief study was done on the phonology and grammar of Ɔkere. The sound system of the language is studied. An observation that was made with regards to phonology is that Ɔkere has ten oral vowels but only seven have nasalized counterparts. Vowel harmony plays a major role in the sound system of Ɔkere where advanced vowels (i e ᴂ o u) do not occur with unadvanced vowels (ɪ ε a ͻ ʊ). As a tone language, tone is crucial in most situations in the language. Ɔkere has two level tones, that is, high (H) and low (L). Tone has both grammatical and lexical functions. The morphology of the Ɔkere noun, verb, adjectives and adverbs words were also studied. It was realized in the study of nouns that nouns inflect for number. Generally, the homoganic nasal /n/ marks plural. However, the vowels /e/ and /ɛ/ mark plural in some cases. These are all prefixed to the noun to realise the plural form. In other cases, the morphemes fo, ɛne and de are suffixed to the noun to mark plurality in which case ɛne is attached to kinship nominals. The suffixes ni and fo are agentive suffixes that are also attached to nouns. The chapter ended with the syntax of Ɔkere. It is observed that Ɔkere University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 132 has an SVO structure where a verb occurs between a subject NP and an object NP. Ɔkere pronouns make distinctions between subject and object pronouns and also between nominative and accusative forms. It is also observed that there is no gender distinction in the language however, animacy is considered. Both animate and inanimate entities are replaced by overt pronouns. Tense and aspect are marked by affixes which may be realized as zero. Both habitual and completive aspects are not overtly marked. The morpheme ne/nɛ is used to mark progressive and perfective with changes in tone while the morpheme be/bɛ is used to mark the future. The morphemes are prefixed to the verb in each case. Since vowel harmony plays a major role in the language, the choice of ne/nɛ and be/bɛ depends on that kind of vowels that occur in the verb root. Even though there are different types of modifiers in the language, adjectives and adverbs are the only modifiers that are studied in this work. It is observed, however, that all modifiers occur on the right side of the elements they modify. In chapter four, ne was identified as the focus marker in Ɔkere. The syntactic distribution of the focus marker is also investigated. The various focus strategies employed in the language are also studied in this chapter. Again, another important thing investigated in this chapter is the various syntactic categories that can be focused in the language. The pragmatic properties of the focus markers are discussed in chapter five. This covers the focus particle ne and weakly emphatic morphemes like ako, ara, nso, and mpo. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 133 6.2 Summary of Findings In this section I concentrate mainly on the findings from the chepters on focus constructions. It was observed that the focus marker ne occurs immediately after a focused constituent. The focus constituent is normally fronted to the left periphery and is immediately followed by the focus marker ne. Three focus strategies were identified in Ɔkere – fronting, clefting and pseudo clefting. The focus marker is used in both fronting and clefting but in pseudo clefting the portmanteau morph de is used. Various types of focus structures were investigated and it was realized that all major syntactic categories can be fronted for focus. In Ɔkere, subject and object NPs, nominalised verbs, adjectives and adverbs can be focused. Even though adverbs fall in the group of focused elements, manner adverbials cannot be fronted for focus. This is because all fronted elements are nominals but manner adverbials are not nominals and therefore cannot be fronted. Interestingly, nominalized adjectives as well as nominalised verbs that do not have nominalizers are marked with high tone. Question words can also be fronted for focus. They either occur in-situ or ex-situ depending on the argument they question. Content question words occur in-situ if they question an object but they occur ex-situ if they question the subject in the sentence. The study shows that focused elements that function as subject whether animate or inanimate, have resumptive pronouns as referents in Ɔkere but those that function as object do not. When animate objects are fronted for focus, what is left is a null pronoun in the object position. Focused elements and University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 134 resumptive pronouns are normally co-indexed in the sentence in which they occur to show that they are co-referents. Other focus markers were also discovered in Ɔkere and these are ako, ara, nso and mpo. These morphemes seem to be borrowed from Akan since they sound and perform the same functions their Akan equivalents perform. These are seen as weakly emphatic morphemes, a name that falls in line with Boadi’s (1974) view on nso, mpo and ankasa in Akan. Interestingly, ne is an exclusive marker and can also perform a selective function in an utterance. In performing the selective function, a choice is made over other possible options explicitly or implicitly. Ako can be used alone in a sentence to perform the selective function. The morphemes nso and mpo are described as inclusive markers but perform different functions. Nso performs an additive function whereas mpo performs scalar function. The morpheme koraa was also discovered in Ɔkere as one which also has a scalar function. Having discovered the weakly emphatic morphemes, it was realized that sometimes they occur with each other or combine with the focus marker ne to achieve a contextual effect in a discourse. Another morpheme that is able to signal information was discovered. It is the morpheme le which is similar to the Akan morpheme de(ɛ). This marker did not undergo a thorough investigation because its function could not be determined easily. Moreover, for lack of space and time, the researcher could not give it much attention. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 135 6.3 Recommendations This study focused on focus construction in the Ɔkere language which is just an aspect of information packaging. It does not cover everything about information packaging. For instance, topic marking, which is an aspect of information packaging, was not considered in this study. There may even be lapses in the study itself as a result of spatial limitations. I therefore recommend a future study on information packaging in Ɔkere. Secondly, a detailed study concerning the phonology and the grammar of the language was not done. There are some complexities in the phonology, morphology and the syntax that need to be studied critically. I recommend that each of these areas should undergo a thorough research so as to uncover the complexities. Finally, it has been observed that Ɔkere has borrowed heavily from Akuapem in particular and Akan in general. A further research may be conducted to bring out the words that have been borrowed and their domain of use in Ɔkere. It is noted in the introductory part of the study that Ɔkere is one of the Guan languages that has received little attention in terms of studies. A study of the above mentioned areas will add to the literature of Ɔkere. 6.4 Conclusion To conclude, this study has contributed to the existing literature in Ɔkere and Guan languages in general. The study was conducted using a descriptive approach to achieve the set goal. This may be a basis for future research in the language since it is aimed at serving as a reference document. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 136 REFERENCES Aboh, Enoch. 2006. If we see Focus, you go left and I go right! Paper presented at the International Conference on Bantu Grammar. SOAS. Aboh, Enoch Olade. 2007. Leftward Focus versus Rightward Focus: the Kwa- Bantu Conspiracy. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics 15, 81-104. 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Information structure: The syntax-discourse interface. New York: Oxford University Press Inc. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 139 Fiedler, Ines, Katharina Hartmann, Brigitte Reineke, Anne Schwarz, & Malte, Zimmermann. 2006. Subject focus in West African languages. Information Structure from Different Perspectives, 234-257. Gebert, Lucyna. 2009. Pragmatically oriented languages. Information structure in Slavic languages. In Lunella Mereu (ed.), Information Structure and its Interfaces, pp. 305-324. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Ghana Statistical Service. 2012. 2010 Population and Housing Census Report. Halliday, Micheal A. K. 1967. Notes on transitivity and theme in English: Part II. Journal of Linguistics 3. 199-244. Hengeveld, Kees, Rijkhoff, Jan & Siewierska, Anna. 2004. Part-of-speech systems and word order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haspelmath, Martin. 2008. Framework-free grammatical theory. 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A survey of Akan adverbs and adverbials. Journal of West African Languages 31(2), 47-71. Saah, Kofi K. 1998. Interrogative sentences in Akan. A paper presented at the Seminar on the Kwa languages of Ghana, Leiden University. Saah, Kofi K. 1997. Topic and focus in Akan. A presentation at the 9th Niger- Congo Syntax and Semantics Workshop. Saah, Kofi K. 1992. Null Object Contruction in Akan. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics: Proceedings of the Kwa Comparative Syntax Workshop 17, 219-244. Saah, Kofi K. 1988. Wh-questions in Akan. Journal of West African Languages 18 (1), 17-28. Sperber, Dan and Dierdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance: communication and cognition, (2nd ed). Oxford: Blackwell. Sulemana, Abdul Razak. 2011. A Phonological sketch of Ɔkere. Unpublished manuscript. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 142 Van Valin, Robert D. and Lapolla Randy J. 1997. Syntax: structure, meaning and function. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 143 APPENDIX 1. Anɛ gua. ‘He/she is running.’ 2. Bͻͻlo a ka᷉ abie mo ase. ‘The ball is lying under the chair.' 3. Abie mo ase ne bͻͻlo a ka᷉. ‘It is under the chair that the ball is.’ 4. Kya a yo ne gbei a koto. ‘It is beside the building that the dog is squatting.’ 5. Ɔpono a so ne εta᷉ a hε. ‘It is the table that the cloth is covering. 6. Me sumε ayirebi a. ‘I sent the child.’ 7. Ayirebi a ne me sumε mo. ‘It is the child that I sent’. 8. Ama ne afétɛ ɛta ᷉ a bo afe a so. ‘It is Ama who hanged the cloth on the line.’ 9. Kobε ne a s m akasini a. ‘It is Kobε who sent the lady.’ 10. Agyinamoa a koto εdeetε a so. ‘The cat is squatting on the mat.’ 11. Anyemi a ne a yér kya a so. ‘The boy is standing on the building.’ 12. Ɔnofo ne agyinamoa a k t ? ‘Where is the cat squatting?’ 13. deetε a so ne agyinamoa a koto. ‘It is on the mate that the cat is squatting.’ 14. Kya a so ne anyemi a yér . ‘It is on the building that the boy is standing’ 15. K t a mo ansi ᷉ ne abobi a bo. ‘It is behind the hat that the cat is.’ 16. Akye a ne me tré mo. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 144 ‘It is the woman that I called.’ 17. Egua ne an gua. ‘Running he is doing.’/ ‘He is running.’ 18. koto ne ak t ͻpono a mo ase. ‘It is squatting it is squatting under the table.’ 19. B r ne ané b r . ‘Talking he is doing.’ 20. B sɛ ne me b sɛ mo. ‘It was asking that I asked him/ her.’ 21. Anyiε a b bͻ ɛ esimi a akye . ‘The man will do the work tomorrow.’ 22. Akye ne anyiε ab bͻ ɛ esimi a. ‘It is tomorrow that the man will do the work.’ 23. Akεseni a b ͻpono a bo to. ‘The lady broke the table here.’ 24. To ne akεseni a b ͻpono a. ‘It is here that the lady broke the table’ 25. Akye a kokye bo to enyede. ‘The woman gave birth here yesterday 26. Enyede ne akye a kokye bo to. ‘It was yesterday that the woman gave birth here.’ 27. To ne akye a kokye enyede. ‘It is here that the woman gave birth yesterday 28. Ade ayirebi a εn brεεw. ‘He/she is walking with the child slowly.’ 29. Brεεw ne ade ayirebi a n twu nεbε. ‘It is slowly that he/she is coming with the child.’ 30. Ɔ fe w ne ataade mͻ bo. ‘Beautiful, this dress is’/ ‘This dress is beautiful.’ 31. Ataade mͻ bo ͻ feɛ w ‘This dress is beautiful.’ 32. De ͻfeεw ne ataade a bo. ‘It is beautiful that the dress is.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 145 33. fa ne tegyi mͻ bo. ‘Delicious, this food is.’/ ‘The food is delicious.’ 34. Ayi a ne Ama bia. ‘It is the stick that Ama broke.’ 35. De ayi a ne Ama bia. ‘It is the stick that Ama broke.’ 36. tε Ama ɛmbia de ayi a. ‘What Ama broke is the stick. 37. tε Esi εmbͻε de εfonkye. ‘What Esi did is sweeping.’ 38. fonkye ne Esi f nky . ‘Sweeping is what Esi did.’ 39. De εfonkye ne Esi f nky . ‘It is sweeping Esi that Esi did.’ 40. De enyede ne mebε. ‘It was yesterday that I came.’ 41. De to ne mebε enyede. ‘It is here that I came yesterday.’ 42. Esi ne anyiɛ a h mo. ‘It is Esi that the man saw (her).’ 43. Nyirebi a ne akye a s mɛ ɛmo. ‘It is the children that the woman sent (them).’ 44. Tegyimͻdahoɛ a ne anyiɛ a t mo ‘It is the food vendor that the man called.’ 45. Sukuufo a ne akyekpɛɛbi a nɛ ɛmo sika. ‘It is the pupils that the old woman gave money to.’ 46. Gbei a ne anyemi a dɛ᷉ mo. ‘It is the dog that the boy hit.’ 47. Esi ne me dε mo. ‘It is Esi that I hit.’ 48. Kofi dε ane? ‘Who is it that Kofi hit?’ 49. Ane ne Kofi dε mo? University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 146 ‘Who did Kofi hit?’ 50. Ama ne Kofi dε mo. ‘It was Ama that Kofi hit.’ 51. Anyemi a k t abie mo ansi.᷉ ‘The boy is squatting behind the chair.’ 52. Ɔnofo ne kya a bo? ‘Where is the building?’ 53. Kya a bo ͻnofo? ‘Where is the building?’ 54. Kya a bo okure a tε. ‘The building is in the town 55. Ayirikyiho a nɛ bͻ ɛ mɛntɛ? ‘The madman is doing what 56. Mɛntɛ ne ayirikyiho nɛ bͻ ɛ a? ‘What is it that the madman is doing?’ 57. Ama b wé Nkran mankye? ‘When will Ama go to Accra?’ 58. Mankye ne Ama b wé Nkran? ‘When will Ama go to Accra?’ 59. Sukuu-fo a pͻ n mɛntɛ bere? ‘When do the students close?’ 60. Mɛntɛ bere tɛ ne Kwame wé ta? ‘When did Kwame go there?’ 61. bͻme ne Kofi dε Ama? ‘Why did Kofi hit Ama?’ 62. Kofi dε Ama sε me ne ahu? ‘Kofi hit Ama for what purpose?’ 63. tre wo ye me? ‘They call you what?’/ ‘What is your name?’ 64. Wo nyε sͻ me? ‘Your name is called what?’/ ‘What is your name?’ 65. Ane ne anyiε a biakε mo a? ‘Who did the man greet?’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 147 66. Mεntε ka ntsu a mo ase a? ‘What is under the water?’ 67. Ane d kɛ tegyi bo ayi a mo ase a? ‘Who cooked under the tree?’ 68. Ane sorɛ ntsu a bɛ fura? ‘Who carried the water home?’ 69. Ane kyɛkerɛ ntsu a ͻkye a? ‘Who poured the water away?’ 70. Mɛntɛ ne ɛne kase bo sukuu nne? ‘What did you learn at school today?’ 71. ne kase ɛtɛ ɛkare nɛmͻ mo ɛkyerɛw. ‘We learnt to read and write.’ 72. Ane bɛmͻ akrɛni a nɛ me? ‘Who will kill the fowl for me? 73. maade nebiri bo ta a? ‘Who are those talking there?’ 74. Ɔnofo ne Esi dankɛ tegyi a? ‘Where did Esi cook?’ 75. Ayi a mo ase ne Esi d kɛ tegyi a. ‘It is under the tree that Esi cooked.’ 76. Esi d kɛ tegyi bo ayi a mo ase. ‘Esi cooked under the tree.’ 77. Mɛntɛ ne Esi dankɛ? ‘What did Esi cook? 78. Oburodwo ne Esi dankɛ. ‘It was plantain that Esi cooked.’ 79. Fura ne me wé. ‘It is home that I went.’ 80. Kwame nso bͻ ɛ esimi a nko ‘Kwame also worked.’ 81. Papa Larbi bɛ bͻ ɛ ͻtͻkoa, abɛ d nso ‘Papa Larbi does nothing, he doesn’t sleep either.’ 82. Anyiɛ a mpo t é me. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 148 ‘Even the man called me.’ 83. Kofi lͻ ɛ paa, béd kyinae mpo. ‘Kofi is very sick, he can’t even sit.’ 84. Nyirebi a ara bɛ f ky fura a tɛ pɛɛ. ‘It is only the children who will sweep the house’ 85. Nyirebi a enw r ara pɛ mͻ wotre me ‘Call me as soon as the children finish.’ 86. Kwasi ako sɛ ntsu nɛ anyimkpɛɛbi a daa anyankye. ‘Kwasi alone fetches water for the old man every morning.’ 87. Anyiɛ a mpo ne t é me. ‘It was even the man who called me.’ 88. Ayirebi kͻ mͻ ara ne abɛ bͻ ɛ esimi a pɛɛ. ‘It is only this child who will do all the chores.’ 89. Kofi ako ne asɛ ntsu nɛ anyimkpɛɛbi a daa anyankye. ‘It is only Kofi who fetches water for the old man every morning’. 90. Wo ako ara ne wob dé ɛ bͻ ɛ . ‘You are the only one who can do it.’ 91. Nyirebi a nso mpo bɛ bɛ fura alete mͻ. ‘Even the children will also come home this evening’. 92. Wo se koraa nso mpo béw r awͻre a ɛkare. ‘Even your father has not finished reading the book.’ 93. ta ne anumude kr ‘It is cloth that elders like.’ 94. ta ne anumude kre bɛɛde ntaade. ‘It is cloth that elders like not dress. 95. Sukuu ne ayirebi a w . ‘It is school that the child is going.’ 96. Tegyi ako ne akye a f . ‘It is only food that the woman sells.’ 97. Kofi ɛnw s anyankye a, mo ako ne af nky fura a tɛ pɛɛ ɛntɛ ne aw sukuu. ‘When Kofi wakes up in the morning, he alone sweeps the whole house before he goes to school.’ 98. Kofi ɛnwoso anyankye a, mo ako fonkye fura a tɛ pɛɛ ɛntɛ ne we sukuu. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 149 ‘When Kofi wakes up in the morning he sweeps the whole house before he goes to school.’ 99. Kwame ako w sukuu daa anyankye. ‘Kofi goes to school alone every morning.’ 100. ne w r bere ɛtɛ Adwoa w r ara pɛ. ‘We finished exactly when Adwoa finished.’ 101. Eei! tɛ ɛye Kwaw bɛ-bͻɛ a, mo ara ne aye abɛbͻɛ. Mɛntɛ se ᷉sɛ᷉ koraa de mͻ? ‘Eei! What Kwaw has been asked not to do, that is exactly what he does. What kind of a person is this?’/ ‘Kwaw always does what he has been asked not to do. What manner of a person is this?’ 102. Ama bɛkase ɛtɛ, tegyi ara ne a gyi. ‘Ama does not study, all she does is to eat.’ 103. Oni a, dodobi mͻ ara ne a nɛ me. ‘The meat, he/she gave me just a small portion. 104. Bɛɛde tegyi ako ne akye a fe, a ntsu nso ‘The woman does not sell only food, she sells water as well.’ 105. Yaw nɛmͻ Ama we sukuu. mo kase awͻre ɛkare ɛmͻ ɛkyerɛw. mo kase le etwu nso. ‘Yaw and Ama go to school. They learn to read and write. They also learn to sing.’ 106. Budu mpo ne me tre mo ne abenku ayi a nɛ me. ‘It was even Budu that I called to cut the tree for me. 107. Anyiɛ a mpo ne kyerɛw Kofi nyɛ. ‘It was even the man who wrote Kofi’s name.’ 108. Ama mpo bisɛ anyɛmi a ɛtɛ montwu bo kya a tɛ. ‘Ama even asked the boy what he took from the room.’ 109. Larbi bͻɛ esimi a pɛɛ, Kwasi mpo abɛntre mo. ‘Larbi did all the work, he did not even call Kwasi.’ 110. Siɛbɛ ennya tegyi a, abɛ tr asokoa, mo nnamfo mpo abɛ tr ɛmo. ‘When Siɛbɛ gets food she does not invite anyone, not even her friends.’ 111. Siɛbɛ ennya tegyi a, abɛ tr asokoa, mo nnamfo koraa mpo abɛ tr ɛmo. ‘When Siɛbɛ gets food she does not invite anyone, not even her friends.’ 112. Kofi koraa bɛ to. ‘Even Kofi came here.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 150 113. Yaw koraa mpo bɛ to. ‘Even Yaw came here.’ 114. Yaw koraa mpo bɛ to. ‘Even Yaw came here.’ 115. Yaw nso koraa mpo bɛ to enyede. ‘Yaw even also came here yesterday.’ 116. Yaw mpo koraa nso bɛ to enyede. ‘Even Yaw also came here yesterday.’ 117. To ne enyede akye a fͻ ntebi a. ‘It is here that yesterday the woman washed. 118. Enyede ne akye a fͻ ntebi bo to. ‘It was yesterday that the woman washed her things’ 119. Ɔfeɛw ne ɛta᷉ mͻ bo. ‘Beautiful this cloth is.’ (This cloth is beautiful.) 120. kprakye ne Ohenewa kprakye bo kya a tɛ. ‘Vomiting is what he/she did in the room.’ 121. kare ne Aku kare awͻre a. ‘He/she read the book.’ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh