The Syntax and Semantics of Akan Ideophones

This paper examines the syntax-semantics of Akan ideophones. As part of the syntactic characteristics of ideophones, the study discusses the word class dynamism in Akan ideophones. Additionally, it looks at the verbal polarity and the group of ideophones that co-occur based on the polarity of the verb. This has become necessary because unlike other parts of speech, not much have been done on Akan ideophones in the literature. Therefore, aside from the contribution that this paper makes to the discussion on the syntactic dynamism in Akan ideophones, it also looks at the sensitivity of ideophones to the polarity of the verb in a sentence. This is against the backdrop that Saah (1995), Bodomo (2006)andAgyekum (2008)have dilated on the morpho-phonological and pragmatic characteristics of ideophones but not much on the syntax and semantics characteristics of Akan ideophones, especially its polarity sensitivity. Hence, this study examines the polarity sensitivity of Akanideophones towards the categorization of ideophones into two, namely Affirmative Polarity Ideophones (API) that only collocate with positive verbs and Negative Polarity Ideophones (NPI) that only collocate with negated verbs. It shows that Negative Polarity Ideophones (NPI) collocate with negatedverbs irrespective of the tense aspect mood. Progovac’s (1993) theory of Entailment and Binding is employed to account for the polarity sensitivity of ideophones while the syntactic dynamism in the ideophones is tested on the X-bar theory.