Exocentric compounds in Akan

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7 Citations (Scopus)

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)139-172
Number of pages34
JournalWord Structure
Volume10
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2017

Keywords

  • Akan
  • Construction Morphology
  • bahuvrihi
  • exocentric compounds
  • synthetic compounds
  • typology

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