Analytical issues in the study of verb–noun compounds: How does Akan fit in?

Abstract

This paper highlights three issues in the study of verb-noun compounding and shows how data from Akan (Niger-Congo, Kwa, Ghana) help answer the relevant questions for the language. The issues, which mainly concern the exocentric subtype, are: one, the syntactic category of the left-hand constituent and that of the whole compound; two, whether the formation of verb-noun compounds is a matter of syntax or morphology; and three, how to distinguish between verb-noun compounds and verb phrases, given their structural similarity. Although these issues have come up somehow in the literature on Akan verb-noun compounds, they have not been deliberately targeted for discussion. This paper fills the gap. It is shown that the left-hand constituent is definitely a verb. This raises the question of how to account for the syntactic category of the exocentric subclass of the compound, given that the compound is not a hyponym of the right-hand nominal constituent whose syntactic category may be assumed to percolate to the whole. It is also argued that, per the criteria in the literature, the formation of Akan verb-noun compounds has to be a matter of morphology and not syntax. Finally, it is shown that there are formal and semantic basis for distinguishing verb-noun compounds from verb phrases in Akan.

Examination of Lexical Derivation in Terminology Associated with Creative Tourism

“…Comparing the findings conducted by (Mostafa, 2013), (Hosseinzadeh, 2014) and (Appah, 2019), the issues of blending and compounding occurred in some languages. The combination of two words into a new words, convey the meaning of a new word in English lexicon (Mostafa, 2013).…”

“…There are several approaches to create new words including borrowing from foreign languages, blending together from several words or deriving from words we already have, as well as converting words from one grammatical class to another. Appah (2019) found that the compound is not a hyponym of the right-hand nominal constituent whose syntactic category may be assumed to percolate to the whole. The research indicates that all Akan compound structures (N-A, N-N, N-V, V-N, and V-V) are either exocentric or possess exocentric subcategories that align with three of the five types recognized by Bauer.…”

Cardinal numerals in Akan

“…We see that the formal pole of schemas ( 12) and ( 14), to the left of the double arrow in the schemas, are similar to those for regular compounds in Akan, except the subscripted feature (cf. Appah 2013Appah , 2015Appah , 2016aAppah , 2016bAppah , 2017aAppah , 2017bAppah et al 2017). Consider, for example, the general schema for noun-noun compounds in Akan and its instantiation by the compound àsɔ ŕédáń 'church building' in ( 16).…”

A Survey of Exocentric Compounds in Three Kwa Languages: Akan, Ewe and Ga

“…For instance, the literal meaning of the first example in Table 13 is an action of fetching water, but the compound refers to the entity that carries out the action of fetching the water. See an extended discussion of these compounds in Appah (2016aAppah ( , 2019.…”

“…The section on Akan is based on studies on Akan compounding in its various dimensions and manifestations (cf. Appah 2013, 2016a, c, 2017a, b, Appah, Duah and Kambon 2017, Appah 2019, based on data drawn from different sources, including an elementary school reader on fishing (Otoo 1946), the Akan translation of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and an Akan translation of Plato's apology of Socrates. The Ewe and Ga data were elicited mainly from native-speaker graduate linguistics students as well as faculty at the University of Ghana.…”