ABSTRACT
A general study of Dangme morphology has been done. However, the phenomenon of compounding has not been studied extensively as the previous studies just mentioned it as a kind of word formation process (eg., Hevi 2011; Owulah 2014). Considering the importance of compounding as a nominalisation process in Dangme, therefore, this study looked at the phenomenon to unravel the nature of compounding in Dangme and to attempt to show what they reveal about compounding in general. Data for the study was drawn from interactions with speakers of Dangme, Dangme novels and radio programmes that are broadcast in Dangme. This was supplemented by the native speaker intuition of the author. The study showed that Dangme compounds are nominals and that they may be formed from two nouns (N-N), a noun and a postposition (N-P), a noun and an adjective (N-A), a noun and a verb (N-V), a verb and a noun (V-N) and two numerals. It is shown that Dangme compounds have endocentric and exocentric subtypes and that the endocentric ones could be left-headed or right-headed. Using Construction Morphology, it is argued that the formal and semantic properties of Dangme compounds that are not traceable to their constituents are holistic properties of the constructions. It is again shown that Dangme multiplicative numerals are exocentric constructions. The phonological processes that compounding in Dangme triggers, including vowel deletion, vowel coalescence, vowel lengthening and tone lowering are discussed.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
3PL 3rd Person Plural
ATM Automatic Teller Machine ATR Advanced Tongue Root CCV Consonant Consonant Vowel CONJ Conjunction
CV Consonant Vowel CxG Construction Grammar
CxM Construction Morphology DEF Definite
Fig. Figure
FM Frequency Modulation HAB Habitual
N-A Noun-Adjective N-N Noun-Noun
NP Noun Phrase
N-P Noun-Postposition N-V Noun-Verb
PERF Perfect POSS Possessive PROG Progressive
PS Packing Strategy
PST Past
RHR Right-hand Head Rule SEM Semantics
SUBJ Subject
SVO Subject Verb Object TAM Tense Aspect Mood V Vowel
V-N Verb-Noun
WP Word and Paradigm
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Dangme oral vowels in words………………………………………………………. 7
Table 2: Dangme nasal vowels in words…………………………………………………….. 8
Table 3: Examples of Dangme N-N compounds……………………………………….. 18
Table 4. Dangme nominal compounds……………………………………………………… 71
Table 5: Dangme N-N compounds…………………………………………………………… 83
Table 6:Relations between Dangme N-N compounds………………………………….. 88
Table 7: Table 4: Dangme N-P compounds……………………………………………….. 95
Table 8: Dangme N-A Compounds………………………………………………………… 101
Table 9: Dangme N-V compounds………………………………………………………… 113
Table 10: V-N Compounds in Dangme…………………………………………………… 118
Table 11: Endocentric compounds in Dangme…………………………………………. 124
Table 12: Dangme possessive exocentric compounds………………………………. 128
Table 13: Dangme non-possessive bahuvrihi compounds………………………….. 131
Table 14: Dangme locative exocentric compounds…………………………………… 133
Table 15: Dangme Agentive exocentric synthetic compounds……………………. 136
Table 16. Dangme simplex Numerals……………………………………………………… 143
Table 17. Dangme Additive Complex numerals……………………………………….. 144
Table 18. Dangme lower multiplicative complex numerals………………………… 149
Table 19. Dangme higher multiplicative complex numerals……………………….. 150
Table 20: Dangme multiplicative numeral compounds………………………………. 151
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Family tree of Dangme……………………………………………………………….. 5
Figure 2: The language map of Ghana (Ethnologue 2016)…………………………….. 6
Figure 3: Figure 3: Dangme vowel chart (cf. Caesar 2012)……………………………. 7
Figure 4: Typology of exocentric compounds (Appah 2017b:166)……………….. 40
Figure 5: Lexical representation of dog (Booij, 2010b: 7)……………………………. 56
Figure 6: Lexical representation of teacher (Booij 2010b: 7)………………………… 56
Figure 7:A construction in CxM (Booij 2016)……………………………………………. 62
DECLARATION…………………………………………………………………………………… i
DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………………… ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT…………………………………………………………………….. iii
ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………….. v
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……………………………………………………………….. vi
LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………………. vii
LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………….. vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………………………… vii
CHAPTER ONE……………………………………………………………………………………. 1
GENERAL INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………. 1
- Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… 1
CHAPTER TWO…………………………………………………………………………………. 21
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 21
- Introduction……………………………………………………………………………. 21
3.1 Chapter Summary……………………………………………………………………. 67
CHAPTER THREE……………………………………………………………………………… 69
THE NATURE OF DANGME COMPOUNDS……………………………………… 69
- Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… 69
4.1.1.1 Dangme noun-adjective (N-A) compounds……………………… 100
CHAPTER FOUR……………………………………………………………………………… 111
DANGME NOUN-VERB AND VERB-NOUN COMPOUNDS…………… 111
- Introduction………………………………………………………………………………. 111
CHAPTER FIVE……………………………………………………………………………….. 140
DANGME NUMERAL COMPOUNDS AND PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES OF DANGME COMPOUNDS………………………………………………………………………………….. 140
- Introduction………………………………………………………………………….. 140
- Dangme Numeral Compounds………………………………………………… 141
CHAPTER SIX…………………………………………………………………………………. 167
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION…………………………………………………….. 167
REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………….. 175
CHAPTER ONE GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Introduction
This thesis is about compounding in Dangme, a Kwa language spoken in the south-eastern part of Ghana. The main objective is to describe the nature of compound words in the language. The present chapter is a general introduction to the study. In section 1.2, I present a general background to the study. In sections 1.3, I discuss Dangme language, its sound systems and basic phonological and syntactic information. In section 1.4, I present the problem statement, while in sections 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7, I present the objectives of the study, the research questions and the significance of the study respectively. I present the research methodology and organisation of the thesis in section 1.8 and 1.9 respectively. Section 1.10 concludes the chapter.
Background of the Study
The principal objective of a linguistic theory is to find out what it is that people know about a language they speak (Chomsky 1986). Chomsky observes that knowing a language is not simply a matter of being able to manipulate a tall list of phrases and sentences that have been stored in the mind. Rather, knowing a language involves having the ability to produce and understand a vast number of words and structures that one might never have heard or produced before.
Knowing the structure of words and their formation in a language equips speakers to form novel words in the language without violating the morphotactics of that language. In other words, knowing the morphology of a
language ensures that speakers of languages do not just produce words they have heard before but also novel ones. Morphology is the study of the study of the internal structure of words and how the various constituents of the complex words are patterned. The constituents which make up the complex words are referred to as morphemes.
A morpheme is either free or bound depending on whether it can stand on its own as a word or has to be attached to another constituent. The form man can stand alone and is understandable in isolation; hence it is a free morpheme. On the other hand the constituent –ly, which occurs in the word manly, making it an adjective, cannot stand alone and be understood and must always be attached to a base. Therefore, it is a bound morpheme. Morphemes, in general are used in two primary ways: to create new words (derivational) and to mark different forms of already existing words (inflectional). Thus, morphology has two main branches: derivational morphology and inflectional morphology.
In this study, my focus is on only derivational morphology, which divides into affixal derivation and compounding. Particularly, this is a study on compounding in Dangme. On the bases of the definition of a morpheme, we observe that not every component of a compound may be considered a morpheme. This is because some of the components of compounds are themselves complex structures. In view of this, the term base, a form to which another form may be attached, will be used to refer to the compound members instead of morpheme.
In pure morphological computation, it is assumed that various components (morphemes) of words contribute their individual meanings and forms to the overall meanings and forms of the words of which they are
constituents. There are instances, however, in which forms that combine to form words in languages do not actually contribute any meaning to the meaning of the words they form part of. That is to say that meaningless morphs which nonetheless combine to form meaningful words are recognised in languages. Anderson (1992: 68) hints on the deviations from the “the one-to- one relation between components of meaning and components of form which is essential to the classical morphological assumption”.
Words in human languages have their internal compositions, and their components are combined in a particular acceptable manner called morphotactics (Kiparsky 1992). Nevertheless, compound words in Dangme are not just the concatenation of meaningful forms that combine their meanings to derive the meaning of the morphologically complex word. Thus, there are instances where the derived complex word shows no meaning relationship with it constituents.
This thesis intends to discover the various morphological patterns that are involved in Dangme compound formation. It aims to unravel the systematic formal and semantic relations between the constituents of Dangme compounds, and between the compounds as morphological constructions and the bases from which they are formed.
According to Aronoff (1976: 17), “the simplest goal of syntax is the enumeration of the class of possible sentences of a language, so the simplest task of morphology, the least we demand of it is the enumeration of the class of possible words of a language”. This study therefore seeks to explore, among other things, the class of the possible compound words of Dangme.
A compound in Dangme may be formed from different categories but the resultant complex word is always a noun. In chapter three and four, I discuss the categories of words that combine to form compounds in Dangme. I show that the constituents of the compounds show some implicit relation and their combination requires that they have certain semantic properties.
The Genetic affiliation and speakers of Dangme
Dangme is a Kwa language of the Niger-Congo phylum that extends from the West Atlantic languages such as Wolof and Fula through Central Africa down to South Africa (Dakubu, 1987). Dangme is spoken by about 1.4 million people in Ghana, West Africa. It is spoken and taught in three out of the ten political regions in Ghana: Greater Accra, which is estimated to have the highest number of speakers, is followed by Eastern region and finally Volta region (Akortia 2014: 2).
