Abstract:
This paper discusses the derivational morphology of the Akan language with
particular focus on verbal nominalization through affixation (particularly
prefixation). There are two ways through which this nominalization process
can be realized in the Asante-Twi dialect of Akan. These are direct verb
stem/base nominalization and nominalization after reduplication. The main
difference between the two nominalization processes is shown to be that
while in the former process, the nominal prefixes adjoin the verb stem
directly to derive nominals, in the latter process, the same prefixation process
also applies but after the reduplication process. I first discuss direct verb
nominalization through prefixation and follow it up with the discussion of the
nominalization process that takes place after reduplication has applied. We
observe that in the case of the latter process, sometimes the nominal prefix
adjoins another prefix; the reduplicative prefix, as studied by Dolphyne
(1988), McCarthy and Prince (1995), Abakah (2004), etc. therefore, giving us
the morphological structure: Affix1 + Affix2 + Stem/Base. The paper argues
that in the direct verbal nominalization, whereas nominal prefixation has to
apply first before nominal suffixation in the Asante-Twi dialect so that the
former forms a constituent with the stem/base, in the reduplicated stem, the
Affix2 (i.e. the reduplicative prefix) has to adjoin first the stem/base before
the Affix1, which is the nominal prefix. A swap in the order/level of
prefixation between Affix1 and Affix2 renders the output form ill-formed, a
case for Siegel’s ([1974] 1979) Level Ordering Hypothesis. Following Siegel
(idem), the reduplicative prefix, which does not cause a change in lexical
category in Akan, is treated as a Class/Level 2 Prefix while the nominal
prefix, which changes the lexical category of the stem and/or the reduplicated
form, is a Class/Level 1 affix. In the end, this paper proposes a common
template structure to account for affixation in nominalization of verbs in
Akan by conflating what looks like two similar morphological structures for
both nominalization of stem/base verbs and reduplicated forms, as follows:
Affix1 ± (Affix2) + Stem/Base ± (Affix3)in that order.
