Akan noun–verb nominal compounds: The exocentric synthetic view (original) (raw)
Related papers
Akan noun-verb nominal compounds: The exocentric synthetic view.pdf
Language Sciences, 2017
A new perspective on how to account for the syntactic category of synthetic compounds.Synthetic compounds do not have to be endocentric; they may be exocentric.The syntactic category of Akan compounds is a holistic constructional property.The tonal melody of Akan compounds may reflect their degree of semantic transparency.The noun constituent of an exocentric synthetic compound may be object or subject.A synthetic compound is regarded as an endocentric construction in which a deverbal nominal head inherits the internal argument of the underlying verb. The Akan noun-verb nominal compound is analysed as a synthetic noun-noun compound with a deverbal right-hand constituent. This is based on a pattern of downstep observed on the first syllable of the second constituent, triggered by a putative floating low tone of a deleted nominal(izing) prefix. This approach, which makes the compound endocentric, is needed to account for the nominal syntactic category of the compound, given that the left-hand nominal constituent is not the head. In this paper, we discuss and reject this endocentric analysis, showing that the argument for the nominal status of the right-hand constituent based on tonal melody alone is weak because some constructs which meet the structural requirement fail to exhibit the specified tonal melody. We argue, however, that we can maintain the synthetic compound analysis without committing to defend the view that the right-hand constituent is nominalized. This is the exocentric synthetic compound view. We present a constructionist account in which the syntactic category is a holistic constructional property of the compound, which is inherited from a meta-schema for Akan compounding. We also present a preliminary constructionist account of the tonal melody of the compound.
Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2016
This paper attempts to demarcate the class of Akan verb-noun compounds like bɔ́-àdéɛ́ [create-thing] 'creator', to discuss their properties and to present a Construction Morphology account of the properties. Working with the view that Akan verbs are invariably consonant-initial and that the verb constituent of verb-noun compounds are invariably simplex, it is shown that many exemplars cited in the Akan literature do not belong to the class because they bear affixes that betray them as either nominalized verb phrases or noun-noun compounds with deverbal left-hand constituents. It is shown that the noun constituent may be the internal argument of the verb mostly, but may also be the external argument or an adjunct, usually naming the location of the action. The noun constituent may bear the semantic role of undergoer, affected object, patient, instrument, location, result or goal of the action/event designated by the verb, while the denotatum of the compound may be agent, theme, instrument, location or condition. Finally, it is shown that Akan Verb-Noun compounds have endocentric and exocentric subtypes whose properties are adequately accounted for in Construction Morphology.