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Part of
Predication in African Languages
Edited by James Essegbey and Enoch O. Aboh
[Studies in Language Companion Series 235] 2024
► pp. 74–98

Chapter 3
A comparative study of the basic locative construction in Gurenɛ, Asante-Twi, and Tongugbe

| Accra College of Education
| University of Ghana
| University of Ghana
The chapter examines the basic locative construction (BLC) in three Niger Congo languages spoken in Ghana: Gurenɛ, Asante-Twi and Tongugbe, and discusses the semantics of the verbs that occur within the construction. Using data elicited with a similar set of locative verb stimuli, we demonstrate that the languages differ in the number and type of verbs that occur in the BLC. While Asante-Twi and Gurenɛ employ mostly positional verbs in the BLC, Tongugbe, similar to the other Ewe varieties, uses the locative predicate. Constructionally, the BLCs in all three languages are similar, that is, each of the languages instantiate the schema NP V PostP.
Keywords: Basic Locative Construction, locative verbs, Gurenɛ, Asante-Twi, Tongugbe
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Salient grammatical features of the languages
    • 2.1Gurenε
    • 2.2Asante Twi
    • 2.3Tongugbe
  • 3.Data
  • 4.The basic locative construction in Gurenɛ, Asante-Twi and Tongugbe
    • 4.1The BLC in Gurenε
  • 5.The semantics of verbs in Gurenɛ BLC
    • 5.1Topological relational
    • 5.2Positional
    • 5.3Distributional
    • 5.4Adhesion/attachment
    • 5.5Existential boi ‘be at’
  • 6.The BLC in Asante Twi
    • 6.1Relational
    • 6.2Positional
    • 6.3Distribution
    • 6.4Adhesive
  • 7.The BLC in Tongugbe
  • 8.Comparing the basic locative construction in the three languages
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 18 July 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.235.03ati
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