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The Akan verb kɔ

Dorothee Beermann

To cite this page see footnote [1]

The verbs and

The verbs and occur as independent verbs, meaning come and go respectively. Sometimes however they are used to convey functional information, of aspectual nature, or information tied to deixis. There is a third use of which occurs when it proceeds a noun denoting a location. In this case seems to express directionality. In the following we will only discuss , leaving the discussion of for another occasion.

TypeCraft hosts at this point (December 2012) 41 Akan sentences that contain .

The Akan corpus has 1029 sentences, 134 contain , either as a word or as a morpheme.--Dorothee Beermann 06:51, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
Te Akan  corpus contains 149 instances of  , either as a word or as a morpheme --Dorothee Beermann 20:14, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

either is an independent verb, or a verbal prefix. You can search for phrases containing in several ways. For example enter into the field: 'Baseform' which you find under the heading Morpheme Level. A list of sentences containing will appear, the number of sentences found is displayed in the upper left corner of your browser. Each found sentence is listed together with information about the annotator and the date the information was changed last. For the following discussion we have exported relevant examples from corpus to this page. The EXPORT TO WIKI function is accessible for all annotators from the TC Editor. Go to "Phrases" on the tool tab, click and choose export to wiki.

Kɔ as an independent verb

Let us first look at sentence (1) and (2) which exemplify the use of as a main verb meaning go.

(1)
nkɔ
“Don't go.”
n`kɔ´
n
NEGIMPgo
Vitr


The first sentence is a negated imperative while the second sentence shows in the cannonical position for Akan verbs in single headed sentences. Akan is an SVO language. As one would expect inflects like any other verb in Akan. In (2) the suffix is glossed as PAST standing for past tense. Osam argues in several articles that Akan verbs inflect for aspect rather than for tense [2] (2)

Kɔ as a spatial expression

The next three sentences illustrate that describes locomotion as well as 'directedness' towards a given endpoint. That also expresses a manner of motion seems back grounded.

(3) (3) means that Ato went with sɛnkuo to town.

(4)
hwansena no akɔ si papa no atifi.
“the fly has gone to sit on top of the man's head”
hwansena
hwansena
3SGSBJ
N
no
no
DEF
DET
akɔ
a
PRFgo
V1
si
si
descend
V2
papa
papa
man3SGOBJ
N
no
no
DEF
DET
atifi
atifi
headtop
Nrel


Sentence (4) is used to express the sitting down aspect of the flies landing on the mans head.

may combine with expressions of manner of movement as shown in sentence (5) where the verb dwane occurs.Dwaneintroduces the manner of movement while introduces, as its argument, the noun that denotes the endpoint of the motion. In (5) Akan follows a satellite marking pattern, using Talmy's terminology [1975]. The only difference other cases of satellite-marking is that the 'satellite'-phrase is headed by a verbal predicate rather than by a prepositional one.

The third meaning of

In its third function appears as a grammatical marker of some sort. It seems that in this function it may either occur as an independent verb or as a verbal prefix. So far TC-annotators have chosen to gloss when occuring in this capacity as INGR, standing for ingressive. Ingressive in this context means to 'entering into an event'. This classifies as an aspectual marker.

However, we are at this point not sure if this is the right annotation and invite comments that will help us to do justice to what we call here the aspectual use of . So please consider example (8) to (13) below


(8)
Nkansa atu akɔtena Ahafo sε nhwεsoni.
“Nkansa has travelled to live Ahafo as a caretaker.”
Nkansa
nkansa
nkansa
Np
atu
atu
PFVfly
V
akɔtena
atena
CONSDIRsit
V
Ahafo
ahafo
ahafo
N
like
V
nhwεsoni
nhwεsonni
NpreftakingCareSGNMLZAGT
N
(9)
Mmrahyεbεdwani he de nkondwa akɔma asɔre he.
“The member for parliment has donated chairs to the church.”
Mmrahyεbεdwani
mmrahyεbεdwani
lawmakecouncilNMLZ
N
he
he
DEF
DET
de
de
use
V
nkondwa
nkondwa
PLchair
N
akɔma
ama
PFVINGRgive
V
asɔre
asɔre
church
N
he
he
DEF
ART
(10)
Bɛɛkɔhwe aburaa no.
“They are going to drain the stream.”
bɛɛkɔhwe
ɛhwe
theySBJPROGgodrain
V
aburaa
aburaa
streamOBJ
N
no
no
the
DET
(11)
Monkɔ nkɔkyeakyea.
“Go and greet them.”
Monkɔ
mon
2PLSBJOPTgo
V
nkɔkyeakyea
nkyeakyea
OPTINGRgreetgreet
V
(12)
Boakye rekɔgye aba abεdi.
“Boakye is going to collect it, come back and eat it.”
Boakye
boakye
B.SBJ
N
rekɔgye
regye
PROGINGRcollect
V
aba
aba
CONScome
V
abεdi
adi
CONSINGReat
V
(13)
Yεεkɔgye yaba yabεdi.
“We are going to collect it, come back and eat it.”
Yεεkɔgye
εgye
1PLSBJPROGINGRcollect
V
yaba
yaba
3PLSBJCONScome
V
yabεdi
yadi
1PLSBJCONSINGReat
V


We are not quite sure how we should annotate in these cases. Any suggestions?

References

  1. Dorothee Beermann. 2012. The Akan verb . TypeCraft Grammar squib. http://www.typecraft.org. Accessed [DATE].
  2. OSAM, E. Kweku. 2003. An Introduction to the Verbal and Multi-verbal System of Akan. In Dorothee Beermann and Lars Hellan (eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Multi-verb Constructions. Trondheim Summer School 2003. Available from: http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/tross/TROSS03-toc.html