Exocentric compounds in Akan

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate exocentric compounds in Akan and to present a Construction Morphology account of their properties. I show that the complex issue of exocentricity is better accounted for if we distinguish between formal and semantic exocentricity. I present Bauer's (2008, 2010) typology of exocentric compounds (bahuvrihi, exocentric synthetic, transpositional exocentric, exocentric co-compounds and metaphorical exocentric compounds) and test the Akan data against them, showing that all Akan compound types (N-A, N-N, N-V, V-N, and V-V) are either exocentric or have exocentric subtypes which fall into three of the five types identified by Bauer. They are bahuvrihi compounds and exocentric synthetic compounds (of which I identify two subtypes each) and transpositional exocentric compounds. I present the properties of each identified type of Akan exocentric compound using formalisms from Construction Morphology ( Booij 2010b ) in which compounds are word-level constructions capable of having holistic properties. The unexpressed features of the exocentric compounds are regarded as holistic constructional properties that do not emanate from the constituents per se.

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

“…Data from the three languages are tested with the view to establishing which of the posited types of exocentric compounds occur in the languages. Contra previous studies (Appah 2016b(Appah , 2017b) that suggested that Akan had only three of the five types posited by Bauer, the present study shows that Akan has four (bahuvrihi, exocentric synthetic, transpositional exocentric and metaphorical compounds) which Ewe and Ga also exhibit to varying extents.…”

“…Working with data drawn from about fifty languages of varied genetic affiliation, Bauer (2008aBauer ( , 2010 breaks new ground in the study of exocentric compounds, providing both a typology and, as he puts it, "a (provisional) terminology for discussing them" (Bauer 2008a:51-52). This section presents Bauer's (2008aBauer's ( , 2010 typology of exocentric compounds as well as suggested elaborations based on data from Bauer's work and others drawn from Akan (Appah 2016b(Appah , 2017b. The approach to the discussion here is largely descriptive, as a detailed critical assessment of Bauer's typology and the basis of the proposed modification is beyond the immediate goals of the present paper.…”

“…1 Building on the distinction between formal head and semantic head there is growing consensus in recent literature on a concomitant distinction between semantic exocentricity and formal exocentricity (cf. Andreou and Ralli 2015, Appah 2016b, 2017b, Bauer 2008a, 2010, 2016, Plag 2003, Ralli and Andreou 2012, Ralli 2013, Scalise and Guevara 2006. A semantically exocentric compound is one which lacks a semantic head, as in the case of English killjoy, which is not a hyponym of either kill or joy.…”

“…However, where there was mixed judgement on some data, I kept the data and explained it in the paper, as the discussion in section 4 will show. Starting with what had been found in Akan (Appah 2016b(Appah , 2017b, the approach was to find out if the same or similar construction types would be found in Ewe and Ga as well. For example, for the section on bahuvrihi compounds (section 4.1), the idea was to find out how the following meanings, which are attested in Akan as bahuvrihi compounds, are expressed in Ewe and Ga: one who possesses X feature/property/item, one who does X, a place where X happens, or a place where X is located.…”

“…In the rest of the paper, there is a general discussion of exocentricity in the context of compounding in section 2 and a presentation of Bauer's typology of exocentric compounds in section 3, exemplifying the types posited and recent suggested modifications in Appah (2016bAppah ( , 2017b. Section 4 deals with the types of exocentric compounds in the three languages, and the paper is concluded in section 5, where I show the pattern that emerges from the study in terms of the types of exocentric compounds found in the three Kwa languages as well as the current structure of the typology, based on Bauer's proposal and the suggested subtypes.…”