Verbs of cooking in Dangme

This paper investigates verbs of cooking in Dangme, a language that belongs to the Kwa family group of languages. It aims at identifying the culinary terms used through the lexical field analysis of Dangme generic verbs of cooking such as hoo ‘cook/boil’, sĩ ‘fry/roast’ and sã ‘bake/grill/roast’. It also examines how its subfields are classified in Dangme and further discusses the syntax and the relationship of inclusion within the semantic field, hyponymy, of the selected Dangme verbs of cooking and the variety of food items they co-occur with. Data were collected from sixty adult native speakers of Dangme through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and focused group discussions. The data revealed that there are a number of lexical items used in describing cooking processes in Dangme, and these verbs have hyponymous relations with selectional restrictions of the food items they co-occur with in Dangme. It was also revealed that the cooking verb sã has three different related meanings. These are ‘to roast’, ‘to bake’ and ‘to grill’. Three different sets of synonyms were also identified. They include sa or kpɔ, ‘to grind’, sĩ/sĩ…he, dlɔ/ dlɔ…he, fiaa…la and hoo…he ‘to steam’ and tsukɔ or tsu ‘to smoke.’

Keywords: Dangme, cooking verbs, lexical fields, hyponymy, selectional restrictions.