The Pragmatic Functions of Some Morphological Structures in Nzema Proverbs

Abstract

The paper examines some morphological processes in the syntactic structure of proverbs in Nzema, a Kwa language spoken predominantly in the South-west part of the Western Region of Ghana, West Africa. The paper focuses on the pragmatic imports of such word formation processes in relation to how they contribute significantly to the understanding of the proverbs. The paper shows the prevalence of word formation processes, such as reduplication, inflections, derivations, lexical borrowing, and compounding in the construction of Nzema proverbs, which essentially help to conceptualise and infer the didactic messages that are communicated via the proverbs. Data were primarily gathered through participant and non-participant observations, including discussions and interviews with competent indigenous Nzema speakers. We extracted additional data from published sources, a compilation of Nzema proverbs and from other literary texts. The paper integrates the assumptions of Goddard's Ethnopragmatic Paradigm and Hockett's Item-and-Arrangement and Item-and-Process Models as theoretical underpinning.

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