Difference between revisions of "The Akan verb kɔ"

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Overview

One of the difficult issues when annotation Akan is to decide how to annotate the two verbs bɛ and kɔ. Both verbs occur as independent verbs, meaning come and go respectively and as verbal prefixes adding aspectual information. kɔ may in addition occur in connection with a noun denoting a place or a location. In the latter case Kɔ seems to express directionality in addition to movement.

The different uses of kɔ

TypeCraft hosts at present 37 sentences from Akan that contain kɔ; either as an independent verb or as a verbal prefix. Notice that some of these sentences come from Abron (Bono) which is one of the dialects of Akan. You can easily search the database yourself by going to Search for Phrases where you enter kɔ in the field: 'Extract morpheme' under the heading Morpheme Level. A list of 37 sentences will appear. You in addition receive information about the annotator and about the date the information was entered into the database. A free translation into English for each of the sentences might help you to further sort the information.

For the following discussion I have exported all 37 sentences into this wiki. This function is accessible from the bottom of the TC search page. A function that I often use is to export a larger set of sentences (30 -40 sentences) which I suspect are potentially interesting. I export them as html. This way I can view them in my browser. I find it easy this way to make a first classification of the data. In our case for example I used the browser view to distinguish between examples that show Kɔ in its function as a verbal predicate and those uses where it functions as an aspectual marker.

Kɔ as an independent verb

Let us first look at sentence (1) and (2) which exemplify the use of kɔ as in independent verb meaning go.

The first sentence is a negated imperative while the second sentence shows kɔ in the cannonical position for Akan verbs in single headed sentences. Akan is an SVO language. As one would expect kɔ inflects like any other verb in Akan. In (2) the suffix is glossed as PAST standing for past tense. (2)

Kɔ as a spatial expression

The next three sentences illustrate that kɔ may describe manner of movement as well as its 'directedness' towards a given endpoint. Using terminology introduced by Talmy one could say that kɔ is neither head- nor satellite-marking, but instead combines both functions by indicating manner and path of movement in one lexical item. Notice that the English translations given by native-speaker annotators try to capture this fact, leading to slightly awkward translations such as He left Accra to Kumasi (meaning: going to Kumasi) or He passed by the school to church (meaning: going to church)

(3) (3) is interesting also for others reasons. Ato is said to have taken his piano to town. I was wondering if sɛnkuo possibly refers to one of the African instruments shown in the picture of African music instruments to the right? --Dorothee 00:04, 4 June 2009 (CEST)

The read square-shaped instrument in the middle of the picture is a sanza which is a small thumb piano. The white elements fixed to the body of the instrument are depressed and released to produce a sound. A Sanza is an instrument that easily can be carried by the player.

Perhaps somebody reading this knows whether a sɛnkuo is an instrument like or similar to a sanza?!

Sentence (4) below shows clearly that also in its function as a spatial expression kɔ remains a verb, since it still inflects for tense. (4) (5) Although kɔ may combine the expression of manner of movement and path of movement this is not always the case. In (6) below ' kɔ is used together with the verb expressing manner of movement, just as if it were a well-behaved satellite marking language, again using Talmy's terminology. The only difference to Germanic satellite-marking languages in this case is that the 'satellite'-expression is headed by a verbal predicate rather than a prepositional one.

(6) Let us know identify a third function of kɔ, which the annotator has chosen to gloss with INGR standing for ingressive. Ingressive in this context refers to a situational aspect and means 'entering into an event'.

We are at this point not sure if this is the right annotation and invite comments that will help us to better distinguish the different meanings of kɔ and in particular to identify correctly the aspectual use of this verb. So please consider example (7) below