Posture verb nominalisation in Likpakpaln 'Konkomba'

Abstract

In this paper I, mainly, examine nominal derivation from posture verbs in a little-researched Mabia (Gur) language known as Līkpākpáln (Konkomba). Līkpākpáln is often associated with the Northern Region of Ghana, although it noticeably spreads beyond that. This study dwells on a corpus drawn from both natural discourse and elicitations. With only very minimal theoretical inspirations, the study observes that the morphological as well as the syntactic features of nominalised posture verbs are, largely, compliant of the generally known linguistic characteristics of Līkpākpáln nouns. Thus, the obligatory feature of affixation, simple and non-simple stem types are attested in the derived nominals. The syntactic idiosyncrasy of nominalised posture verbs is, however, their defiance to function as nominal modifiers in NP structure. In nominalisation strategy, I argue that Līkpākpáln posture verb nominalisation sees a preponderant synchronisation of the processes of prefixation and a reduplication of the posture verb base. Another relevant finding of this study is that the figurative uses and meanings of nominals derived from Līkpākpáln posture verbs reinforce the claim in Newman’s (2002) socio-cultural domain of the semantic frame for the analysis of postural senses.