Talk:The Akan verb kɔ

I think the kɔ in the cases where it occurs before the main verb and after the subject should be glossed EGR for egressive, parallelling ba INGR ingressive. In the other cases where it follows another verb it is undoubtedly an independent verb in a serial construction. (Mary Esther Dakubu)

The term sɛnkuo is used in Akan to refer to all stringed instruments(chordophones) including the piano and keyboad. sɛnkuo could therefore be used to refer to a sanza!(John Ganaah)

Between the INGR for ingressive and EGR for egressive glossing of kɔ, the lexical semantics of kɔ suggests an 'exiting' from the action than 'entering' into the action.Deitically speaking, kɔ expresses movement away from the speaker. I therefore think along the same lines as the contributor Mary Esther Dakubu, that kɔ comes out better glossed as EGR than INGR.

I was wondering whether these are all the meanings associated with the use of kɔ in Akan? The reason is that kɔ can also occur in verbal compound constructions such as Yɛ didikɔ meaning we keep on eating and Yaw kikakɔ meaning Yaw keeps saying,where it does not just indicate directionality but intensity and continuity of the action?

Secondly, I see that kɔ, apart from occuring in simplex sentences as the main verb or head, it can also occur as an adjunct. For example bɔkɔ meaning play away and dɔkɔ meaning weed away.

There are also some nominalised constructions in which kɔ occurs and the meaning it elicits can be described as euphemism associated with an idiomatic use. An example is Nana no kɔakuraa literally meaning the chief is gone to the village but euphemistically means the chief is dead.

In annotating kɔ as an aspectual marker, the question for which I seek clarification is this "Where should we look at in determining the aspectual marking of verbs in Akan- the lexical composition of the verb or aspectual affixes?"

My suggestion is that, if only a few verbs, in Akan are lexicalised as stative verbs expressing lexical aspect, of whichkɔ is not part, it presupposes that all other verbs including kɔ depend on the right verbal affix to express one form of aspect or the other. In that case, I think that what type of aspect kɔ expresses depend on its combination with an aspectual suffix.