Noun-Noun Compounds in Ewe

This paper investigates noun-noun compounds in Ewe, a Kwa (Niger-Congo) language spoken in Ghana. It provides a broad description of their properties and categorises them according to the grammatical and semantic relations between their constituents. It is shown that Ewe noun-noun compounds may be grouped into attributive, subordinate (and coordinate) types based on the grammatical relationship between the constituents. An exploration of the semantic relation between the constituents leads to the identification of compounds whose constituents share relations, like ingredient-for, part-of, location for etc. Considering the overall semantics of the compounds, we identify the two principal types based on the presence of a head constituent – exocentric compounds whose meanings do not emanate entirely from their constituents, and endocentric compounds. The latter are further grouped into right-headed, left-headed (and dual-headed) compounds, based on the position of their head constituents.