Abstract:
This study is a toponomastic study of suburb names, using the Causal theory of Names
as proposed by Evans (1985) and the Frame theoretical framework as proposed by
Fillmore (1985). The study investigates the morphological processes, phonological
processes and syntactic structure of about seventy (70) suburb names. The suburb
names for this study were collected from primary source. The researcher supported the
primary data with oral structured interviews to ascertain the complete structure of the
names since some of them might have undergone some phonological processes.
Purposive sampling technique was employed in the selection of the sample size. The
researcher also used inductive and creative synthesis approach to categorize the suburb
names under the right morphological, phonological and syntactic divisions. Under the
morphological analysis, the study reveals that some Agona suburb names are formed
through compounding and affixation. Phonological processes such as vowel harmony,
homorganic nasal assimilation and elision are important to this study were examined.
The study also shows that some Agona suburb names at the sentential level can function
as statements, interrogatives and imperatives and they can structurally be simple,
compound and complex sentences. The study reveals that Agona people use personal
names, trees or animal names, characteristics of the physical environment of the place,
activities/occupation carried out at the place, events/incidents that happened at the place
and names from the bible to name their suburbs. The study found that suburb names
reveal the history, culture and religious beliefs of the Agona people. Lastly, referential
and other cognitive meanings of some suburbs from the categories of the established
naming system were identified. The Causal theory allowed for identification of the
referential meanings from the community while the Frame theory explains how the
meanings are cognitively retrieved from the speakers’ mental encyclopedic knowledge.
Description:
A thesis in the Department of Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Foreign Languages
Education and Communication, submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in
partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree of
Master of Philosophy
(Applied Linguistics)
in the University of Education, Winneba.
AUGUST, 2019