Basic and extended uses of posture verbs in Gurenɛ

Atintono, Samuel Awinkene

doi:10.4000/cognitextes.501

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Accounts by linguists who report their own native-speaker intuitions about such extensions are therefore particularly valuable in this regard (cf. Atintono, 2012;Lemmens, 2002;Song, 2002), as are accounts by linguists reporting on native speakers' responses to targeted questions about such extensions (cf. Rice, 2002).…”

Section: Locative Extensionsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Experiential motivation and the linguistics of sitting, standing, and lying

Newman

2022

WIRES Cognitive Science

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The three human at‐rest postures of sitting, standing, and lying are basic, recurring features of human behavior and may reasonably be called primary postures. The three postures share the property of being stable through time, but they are also differentiated in terms of their overall shape, their physiological properties, and typical associated behaviors such as the association of sitting with social interaction, and lying with sleeping. The experiential realities of the three postures underlie and motivate a range of cross‐linguistic phenomena involving morphemes with meanings of “sit”, “stand,” and “lie”. The relevant linguistic phenomena include higher frequencies of occurrence compared with other kinds of posture verbs and differential behavior with respect to some morphosyntactic patterns involving notions such as agentivity. The posture morphemes can also be the source for a variety of semantic extensions reflecting experiential realities of the postures, such as the extension of “lie” to mean “sleep” in some languages. Extensions also include grammaticalizations of the posture morphemes to locative and aspectual markers which reflect the temporal stability and spatial fixedness of the postures themselves. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Cognitive Linguistics Linguistics > Language in Mind and Brain

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Section: Locative Extensionsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Experiential motivation and the linguistics of sitting, standing, and lying

Newman

2022

WIRES Cognitive Science

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“…One notable generalization for most Ghanaian languages in the study of syntactic categories is the view that these languages have postpositions rather than prepositions. Research has shown that in languages such as Ewe (Duthie, 1988), Dagaare (Saanchi, 2005;2014), Ga (Dakubu, 1988), Awutu (Frajzyngier, 1974), Akan (Christaller, 1875) and Gurunɛ (Atintono, 2012a;2012b;2013), the class of closed words that code spatial relations are postpositions derived from nouns. This has consequently led to the establishment of a syntactic category labelled as postpositions.…”

Section: The Coding Of Spatial and Locative Reference In Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

On body-part nouns and the expression of spatial and locative reference in Dagbani

Issah¹

2020

Topics in Linguistics

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This paper examines the linguistic means by which spatial relations are expressed in Dagbani, a Mabia (Gur) language spoken in the northern region of Ghana (West Africa). I pay particular attention to the grammar of Dagbani “postpositions” demonstrating that the system of locative expressions comprises words that share heterosemic relations with some body parts and landmark terms. I show that although these locative expressions are related both segmentally and suprasegmentally to the nominal items they might have developed from, they are distinct in terms of their semantic, syntactic and morphological properties. Consequently, I conclude that the body-part nouns in locative constructions are distinct syntactic categories due to the morphosyntactic and semantic differences they exhibit. These body-part nouns are thus analysed as grammaticalized items, which function as postpositions and instantiate a postpositional phrase (PostP) category. Finally, I propose possible series of semantic changes that could account for the development of the body-part terms as postpositions.

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The semantics and metaphorical extensions of temperature terms in Gurenɛ

Atintono¹

2015

Typological Studies in Language

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Basic and extended uses of posture verbs in Gurenɛ

Cited by 4 publications

References 24 publications

Experiential motivation and the linguistics of sitting, standing, and lying

Experiential motivation and the linguistics of sitting, standing, and lying

On body-part nouns and the expression of spatial and locative reference in Dagbani

The semantics and metaphorical extensions of temperature terms in Gurenɛ

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