Legon Journal of the Humanities

Dialectal variation in lexical borrowings in Dangme

Raymond Teye Akrobettoe — 2022-12-15

language spoken in Southern Ghana. Dangme has seven dialects (Ada, Gbugblaa, Yilɔ Krobo, Manya Krobo, Nugo, Sɛ and Osudoku), but this study concerns lexical borrowings into the first four. The language is in contact with four languages from which it has borrowed: Ewe, Ga, Akan, and English. Each dialect of Dangme is in direct contact with English, the official language of Ghana, and with at least one of the three Ghanaian languages. While Ada is in contact with Ewe and Gbugblaa with Ga, both Yilɔ Krobo and Manya Krobo are in contact with Akan and, to some extent, Ewe. The study departed from focus on phonological adaptation of borrowed words, the subject matter of previous studies, to pursue two interrelated objectives, i.e., to find out: (i) whether, and to what extent, borrowings into a dialect from a given source language remain localized or are transferred to the other dialects and (ii) whether, and what extent, the lexical borrowings constitute additions to the Dangme lexicon or, conversely, a relexification of native words in the lexicon. Eighty (80) respondents, 20 each from the four dialects considered, were purposively sampled to participate in the data collection process and the data analysis was done within the Variationist Sociolinguistics Theory. It was found that while most Akan and English lexical borrowings have become integrated in all the four dialects of Dangme, this is not the case with lexical borrowings from Ga and Ewe. Most Ga borrowings are found only in Gbugblaa and most Ewe borrowings are found only in Ada and, to some extent, Manya Krobo. It was also found that Akan and English lexical borrowings generally constitute additions to the Dangme lexicon while Ewe and Ga lexical borrowings may be seen as subtractive borrowings or cases of relexification in Ada and Gbugblaa respectively. The study is expected to contribute to an understanding of how languages like Dangme whose dialects have geographical contact with different languages develop dialectal variation.

Serial verb reduplication in the Mabia languages of West Africa

Adams Bodomo — 2022-12-15

This paper introduces and discusses the notion of Serial Verb Reduplication (SVR) in two Mabia languages of West Africa, Dagaare and Kusaal. The authors show that the phenomenon of SVRs, though under-represented in the literature, has a wide scope occurrence in natural language usage within serializing languages. Theoretically, two lexical semantic notions: semantics of verbs (verb meaning) and pluraction, are advanced to explain the intricacies of the syntax and semantics of SVRs. The paper identifies two groups of SVRs: canonical SVRs and pluractional SVRs and proposes that semantically bleached verbs can only be reduplicated in pluractional benefactive and causative SVRs in these languages.

‘A man is known by the company he keeps’: A critical overview of semantic prosody

Boutheina Ben Ghozlen — 2022-12-15

The discipline of corpus linguistics has revolutionized the study of language in a variety of ways. In this respect, semantic prosody is one of the rapidly evolving research streams that encapsulates the incorporation of digital technology into linguistic research and deserves more scholarly attention. The paper aims to offer new insights into the study of this theoretical concept. It presents a critical review of the existing literature, delineating the major merits and challenges of this area of inquiry, and suggests novel research avenues. This article has theoretical and practical implications for the future research agenda on semantic prosody. It underscores the importance of endowing this corpus linguistics concept with more clarity and consistency as to its labeling, conceptualization, and delimitation. The paper also proposes some new applications pertaining to the investigation of the discursive construction of human referents across different text types.

Are we still Shona? An AOTS framework approach to navigating immigration-related identity

Araba Ayiaba Ziekpor Osei-Tutu — 2022-12-15

Using the African Oral Traditional Storytelling (AOTS) Framework as a culturally centered and responsive storytelling approach to studying with African peoples, this article shares the experiences of a Shona family in the United States of America as they navigate the maintenance and/or retention of their native language and culture as well as transmitting these to their children. Thus, using storytelling as analysis and theory, this article contributes to the discourse on African immigrant identity conceptualization and reconceptualization through a decolonial lens with the aim of encouraging conversations on the gradual linguistic and cultural genocide that continues to plague Africans as we critically wrestle with the lingering effects of colonialism and the lure of global mobility.

In search of the better? The representations of Utopia and dystopia in Kofi Awoonor’s This Earth, My Brother…

Kwame Osei-Poku — 2022-12-15

This paper is informed by the extensive corpus of African postcolonial critique that examines the after-effects of empire in ex-colonial societies. Thus, in the studied engagement of the Ghanaian ex-colonial state, this paper turns to Awoonor’s This Earth, My Brother..., read as one of such commentaries on the rusted, conscienceless ex-colonial nation and the tones of negative burdens laid on citizens’ existential quest for selfhood, self-actualisation and the assertion of identity. In such a circumstance, one may be lost between the real world and a wishful world; the real being the present state of affairs and the wishful being that for which they yearn. Through critical reading and analysis, we discuss the representations of utopia and dystopia in This Earth, My Brother..., in the light of the myriad features that these concepts offer. The paper argues that the extradiegetic Ghanaian nation has much to learn from Awoonor’s diegetic lifeworld.