THE PRAGMATIC CONDITIONS FOR PRESENT PERFECT AND SIMPLE PAST SENTENCE-MAKING IN AKAN

In the simple past in Akan, an event gets ‘completed’; in the present perfect, it has ‘continued (or current) relevance’. Common to these two sentences is the idea that an event ‘occurred anterior to the time of speech’ (Osam 1994) by virtue of which they both can be said to possess the element of pastness. But, what in an event gets completed in the simple past? or has continued relevance in the present perfect? and are these two senses without any shared foundations? The need for answers to these questions is the main drive for this paper. The claim of this paper is that the quest for the simple past and the present perfect sentence meanings and meaning-difference in Akan lies in the discovery of the event situations that are evaluated for continued or current relevance; and that an event (i.e., a happening or non-happening) in the simple past is not without the situation(s) that are evaluated for present perfect sentence-making in Akan. The paper takes a situation-motivated approach in its discovery of these pragmatic situations. In the end, it identifies three situations, namely the outcome or state, context and time of a happening or non-happening as bases for present perfect and simple past sentence-making in Akan. It therefore concludes that the currency of an outcome or state, context and/or time of a happening or a non-happening from a speaker’s point of view – i.e., a speaker’s view that one or combinations of these situations persist(s), or is/are evident, as at utterance – is/are the motivation(s) for a present perfect sentence-conclusion/making. Its affirmative and negative are different with the former being a happening, but the latter, a non-happening. Same distinction underlies the simple past affirmative and negative sentence differentiation. In the simple past, one or combinations of the three situations is/are viewed as presently not evident (i.e., not persistent). From the above conclusions, a proposal to the effect that a-and-ɪ, as in the simple past, are non-evidential markers, with a-and-ɪ as in the present perfect as evidential markers, is appropriate.