Negation in Dangme

Abstract

This paper presents a descriptive analysis of negation in Dangme. It considers the negative morpheme in Dangme, and how some of its allomorphs are used in the language. The segmental variants of the negative morpheme in Dangme are [wē] or [bé] or [-í] or [΄]. The choice of any depends largely on the shape of the verb stem. I consider the segmental [wē] allomorph as the underlying form since all the other allomorphs are derived from one another. Data for this paper was collected mainly from Dangme students of the University of Education, Winneba, and as a native speaker, I also provided some of the data for this work. The purpose of this paper is to examine these allomorphs of the negative in Dangme. This paper is organized into three sections. In the first section, I give a brief background of Dangme. I include background on the vowel system of Dangme and discuss only the verbal system of Dangme which is relevant to this study. I then briefly discuss the lexical and grammatical functions of tone in Dangme. In the second, I examine the negation strategies: morphological, syntactic, lexical and phonological. I also discuss factors affecting the choice of a negative morpheme in Dangme. The last section summarizes and concludes the paper.