Noun-Noun compounds in Dangme

This paper examines the class of Dangme compound words that consist of two nouns within the framework of Construction Morphology. The paper indicates that the constituents of Dangme noun-noun compounds are either simplex or complex, with the latter being compounds or affix-derived complex nominals. The study shows that the constituents of N-N compounds in Dangme may not share the same semantic characteristics; yet a covert relation such as “part of”, “ingredient of”, “causer of” and “location of” holds between them, and this unexpressed relation constitutes pragmatic information that affects the interpretation of the compounds. It is shown that some nouns may lose part of their core semantic properties when they occur as constituents of compounds, resulting in the non-compositionality of the compounds in which they occur. This is the case especially with exocentric N-N compounds in the language which would have be interpreted metonymically or metaphorically because their meanings are constructional properties rather than the compositional function of the meanings of their constituents.