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Classroom talk:LING2208 - Annotating Akan

Agreement phenomenon

In Akan, there seems to mainly be agreement in number with nouns.

Kofi mmoa akɛseɛ no awu
“Kofi's big animals have died.”
Kofi
kofi
kofi
N
mmoa
mmoa
PLanimalSBJ
N
akɛseɛ
akɛseɛ
PLbig
ADJ
DEF
DET
awu
awu
PRFdie
V

In this case, the feature plural of the noun mmoa, seems to be shared with the adjective. It is difficult to say whether the noun or the adjective is the controller, but the domain seems to be the phrase level.


Though here, akɛsie is plural, while bayerɛ does not seem to be plural, and neither does the second adjective.


na wakɔfa saa dompe no de ndompe mmienu no adwane.
“he will then grab the other bone and run away with two bones”
na
na
FOC
PRT
w
w
3SG
PN
akɔfa
afa
FUTgotake
V
saa
saa
that
ADJ
dompe
dompe
bone
N
no
no
DEF
DET
de
de
usePRES
V
ndompe
ndompe
PLbone
N
mmienu
mmienu
twoPL
ADJ
no
no
DEF
DET
adwane
adwane
FUTrun
V

The adjective mmienu seems to have an inherent feature of number, and this is shared with the noun, which is also inflected for it. This could indicate that adjectives are the controllers rather than the nouns.

Nicklas Nilsen 10:14, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

There seem to be two functions associated with the a-prefixes: "a-" occurs in purpose clauses and in SVCs. The derived verbs are sometimes called a-form verbs and Akan scholars do not agree on the grammatical nature of a-form verbs.

The other a-prefix has been cllassified as a perfective (PFV) verb form, but also as Aorist.
--Dorothee Beermann 12:08, 25 March 2014 (UTC)