Tense or aspect? Semantics of the verbal suffix (-V) in Akan

The present study investigates the semantics of a verbal suffix, the reduplicated vowel (-V) in Akan, while also addressing the role of tense and aspect (TA) markers in the morphological structure of the Akan verb. The verbal suffix (-V) has been analyzed as an aspectual marker by some but as a past tense by others. Based on data from native speaker’s judgements and corpora, three observations are made in the present study: (i) the verbal suffix (-V) encodes a reference time (R) that is anterior to the speech time (S), (ii) the verbal suffix (-V) can be used in conditional and counterfactual sentences which have a reference time that coincides with speech time (R,S) or follows it (S_R), (iii) the completive meaning associated with events marked by (-V) is not asserted but a pragmatic interpretation that is associated with past tense in general. The study shows that the fact that the verbal suffix (-V) does not occur with the progressive and perfect aspects does not count as evidence against its status as past tense. Rather, in Akan, there is a general prohibition of overt marking of tense and aspect in a single clause, such that each verb is inflected for either tense or aspect, not both, in the clause.