This paper investigates an important feature common to Ewe and Dangme, but not shared with such Kwa languages as Akan or Ga, namely a periphrastic construction commonly having "progressive" and/or "prospective" meaning, in which the finite verb is selected from a very small set and takes a complement consisting of the event-naming verb that is preceded by its Object and followed either by a construction-specific suffix (Dangme) or one of two characteristic morphemes (Ewe). The finite verb, the post-event-verb morpheme, or both, generally have spatial features. The paper begins with a basic comparative description of the simple verb in the two languages, before proceeding to a detailed description of the progressive and prospective constructions in Ewe, followed by a comparably detailed description of the imperfective construction in Dangme. It is concluded that in both languages we have to do with an elaboration of the construction type V + nominalized NP Complement, which exists throughout the lower Volta Basin in many forms, if not always this one. Despite surface similarities the two languages exhibit important differences in both the semantic range of the construction and its syntax, such that it is likely that in this respect each language has developed independently of the other.
In Ga, certain locative or goal-oriented expressions involve a type of multiverb construction that is characterized by the independence of the agreement (including A(spect), M(ood) and P(olarity)) features and argument structures of the verbs, such that the syntactic and functional status of the second, locative VP poses an interesting problem. The compositional semantics of the sentence suggests that the second, locative VP, sometimes known as a "verbid" expression, is the Predicate of the first, which then must be its semantic subject, and a close examination of various constructions in Ga indicates that this is a reasonable interpretation.On the other hand, only the first verb takes the full range of aspectual markers and arguments. This together with the relations holding between the objects of the verbs, and the behaviour of the locative VP when in focus, suggests that on the syntactic level the reverse situation holds, that the locative clause specifies the other as its adjunct.
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