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Exocentric Compounds in Akan
Exocentric Compounds in Akan
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to study exocentric compounds in Akan and to present a
Constructions Morphology account of their properties. I show that the complex issue of
exocentric compounds) and test the Akan data against them, showing that all Akan compound
types (N-A, N-N, N-V, V-N, and V-V) have exocentric subtypes which fall into three of the
five types identified by Bauer. They are bahuvrihi compounds and exocentric synthetic
compounds of which I identify two subtypes each and transpositional exocentric compounds.
I present the properties of each identified type of Akan exocentric compound using
formalisms from Construction Morphology (Booij 2010b) in which compounds are word-
level constructions capable of having holistic properties. The unexpressed features of the
exocentric compounds are regarded as holistic constructional properties that do not emanate
1. Introduction
One of the main criteria for classifying compounds is the presence of a constituent that shares
formal and/or semantic properties with the whole compound. Based on this criterion, two
principal types of compounds are identified, as exemplified in (1). A compound that has a
head element in it (1a) is called an endocentric compound whilst one that has no head element
defined as “compounds which are hyponyms of their head element” (Bauer 2010: 167).
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Exocentric compounds, on the other hand, are usually defined as the class that is left after
endocentric compounds have been removed (cf. Scalise and Guevara 2006: 192).
Endocentric compounds are very common cross-linguistically and have received a lot of
research attention. Exocentric compounds, on the other hand, are not so common. As Dressler
(2006) remarks, exocentric compounds are marked relative to endocentric compounds; they
are less common cross-linguistically and in individual languages and less common in the
word classes in which they occur. They are also marked with regard to the classes of words
they form. Bauer (2008: 71) captures the observed general lack of productivity of exocentric
compounds succinctly when he remarks that “in very few languages is the formation of
claimed that in some languages, including Turkana (Dimmendaal 1983), Seediq (Holmer
1996) and Kayardild (Evans 1995), exocentric compounds appear to be the most frequent
compound type. Again, in Italian, the most productive type of compounding is exocentric (cf.
Given this situation, exocentric compounds receive no more than passing mention in the
even in languages where they are clearly attested. Scalise and Guevara (2006: 185), thus,
phenomenon.”
Theoretical and typological studies of exocentric compounds are also rare. Exceptions
in this regard are Scalise and Guevara (2006) and Bauer (2008, 2010). This dearth of cross-
linguistic studies of exocentric compounding is clear from the fact that one of the aims of
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Bauer (2008: 51-52) was to “provide a (provisional) terminology for discussing them
[exocentric compounds].” Again, Bauer (2010: 168) regards his study as “a necessary
Even these typological studies are severely restricted in the languages they cover.
Scalise and Guevara (2006), for example, base their study on data from seventeen languages
of which only two (Chinese and Korean) are spoken outside of Europe (cf. Scalise and
Guevara 2006: 204, n. 3). Bauer’s (2008, 2010) studies are relatively more extensive,
covering data from about fifty typologically diverse languages collected from descriptive
grammars.i
The reasons for the lack of attention to exocentric compounds are varied. For general
theoretical studies of compounding, one may suggest that exocentric compounds pose a
puzzle because they are not easy to account for within the most popular theoretical models
which assume that the properties of compounds percolate from their constituents, especially
the head constituent (cf., inter alia, Lieber 1980, 1983, 1992; Scalise 1984). For such models,
proponents to posit zero morphs in order to account for missing properties of the compounds.
For descriptive works on compounding, however, one gets the impression, on reading
Bauer (2008, 2010), that researchers simply do not pay close enough attention to exocentric
compounds because they are not very common anyway or probably because they
inadvertently get classified with endocentric compounds. As Bauer (2008: 55) puts it;
potentially exocentric constructions are not necessarily described as such, even in good
language-descriptions or in descriptions which focus on word-formation. It is
accordingly difficult to be sure that other languages do not also have a wider range of
exocentrics than can be determined from reading the grammars of those languages.
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The present study, therefore, contributes to an area of contemporary linguistic morphology
that is in need of attention, by showing that Akan (Kwa, Niger Congo) has various subclasses
We do not know very much about exocentric compounds in Akan and it seems to me
that there are two main reasons for this. The first reason, which accords with Bauer’s
observation above, is that researchers have simply not paid attention to exocentric compounds
oldest grammar of Akan (Christaller 1875), although they are not so-named. Christaller
(1875: 25, 29) identified what he called spurious compounds which he contrasted with
Spurious compounds are also made up of two or more words, but none of them expresses
the genus of the thing of which the whole compound denotes a species; such a
compound, as it were, occupies the place of the qualifying word, and the general notion
(person or animal, or thing) is left to be supplied (Christaller 1875: 25).
The second reason is that research on Akan compounds have been generally focused on issues
2006; Obeng 2009; Marfo 2004; Dolphyne 1988; Abakah 2004; Anderson 2013; Anyidoho
1990) and vowel harmony (Dolphyne 1988), leaving out the grammatical and semantic
properties.
In the rest of the paper, I briefly introduce Construction Morphology and the formalism
I discuss this in section 3, focusing on what will be essential for the issues at hand, since
headedness has been thoroughly discussed in the literature (cf., inter alia, Williams 1981;
Selkirk 1982; Scalise 1984; Zwicky 1985; Di Sciullo and Williams 1987; Bauer 1990; Scalise
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1992; Štekauer 2000; Arcodia 2012). In section 4, I take a closer look at the literature on
exocentricity, noting how it has been defined. Here, I argue, based on the literature (Scalise
and Guevara 2006; Plag 2003; Bauer 2008, 2010), that we have to distinguish between formal
Bauer (2008, 2010) provides criteria for exocentricity based on which he identified five
compounds). I then apply the criteria to Akan compounds, showing which of Bauer’s types
are attested in Akan and what other types, if any, may be added to Bauer’s Typology (section
6). This is where I employ Construction Morphology formalism in modelling the properties of
Data for this study were collected from a variety of written texts, including a children’s
reader on fishing, an Akan translation of Plato’s Apology of Socrates and a wordlist from
Christaller’s (1933) dictionary. I also elicited data from native speakers at the University of
Ghana and also provided some examples, as a native speaker – names of various
items/entities, plants, characters in folktales, etc., that, upon careful considerations, sounded
exocentric.
2. Construction Morphology
morphology, syntax and the lexicon and of the semantic properties of complex words” (Booij
2010a: 543). The main tenets of CM are a theory of the notion construction, a theory of word
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In CM, the notion construction, as developed in Construction Grammar (Goldberg
1995, 2006; Michaelis and Lambrecht 1996), is adopt to develop “a framework in which both
the differences and the commonalities of word-level constructs and phrase-level constructs
can be accounted for” (Booij 2010b: 1). Thus, in CM, words are morphological constructions
– word-level form-meaning pairs that may have holistic properties – and they are formed by
schemas that generalize over sets of existing complex words and also serve as recipe for
forming new ones. The schema in (2), for example, generalizes over right-headed compounds
The upper-case variables X and Y stand for the major lexical categories (N, V & A). The lower-case
variable a and b stand for arbitrary strings of sound segments, whilst i, j and k are indexes for the
matching properties of the constituents of the compound and the compound as a whole
The schema says that given any two constituents ([X]i and [Y]j) the compound so formed will
be a types of “Y” ([Y]k). The variables a and b represent arbitrary phonological strings.
Schemas and the constructions that are formed by them co-exist in the lexicon, a
relations hold – “instantiation” and “part of” relations. Instantiation holds between a schema
and a word that is formed by the schema and part of obtains between a complex word and its
Therefore, in a language with right-headed nominal compounds like Akan, there would be a
specific instantiating schema with the variables a and b, substituted by the syntactic category,
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An even more specific schema with the variables substituted by specific lexical items
instantiates the general template for Akan N-N compounds (4), showing what a word formed
by the dominating schema looks like. Here, we see the two kinds of relation; the compound
àsɔ́rédáń instantiates the Akan N-N compound schema while its constituents, àsɔ́ré and dáń,
have a part of relations with the compound. The more specific schema inherits its non-unique
relations. For example, (4) does not stand alone as an abstract word-formation schema. It is
connected to other words in the lexicon that contain either àsɔ́ré, such as Mɛ̀tɔ́dèsè àsɔ́ré
‘Methodist church’ or dáń such as dáń-wá ‘cottage’. This creates a network of related words,
3. Headedness in compounding
In syntax, the notion head characterizes the dominant member in an asymmetrical relationship
within a construction (cf. Croft 2001: 241). The notion was explicitly applied to all
morphological constructs in the early 1980s by Williams (1981) and Selkirk (1982) and
defended strongly (cf. Štekauer 2000; Di Sciullo and Williams 1987). However, not all
linguists share the view that the notion extends naturally to all morphological constructions,
especially affix-derived words (cf. Bauer 1990; Zwicky 1985). For compounding, though, the
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notion head has existed longer and has had a central role in its study (cf. Scalise and Fábregas
2010).
presence of a head constituent. It may also be based on the word class of the head (yielding
nominal compound, verb(al) compound, adjectival compound, etc.) or the position of the head
propose what was initially presented as an absolute universal, the so-called right-hand head
rule which he formulated as: “[i]n morphology, we define the head of a morphologically
Later research showed that left-headedness also abounds, especially in the Romance
languages which have predominantly left-headed compounds (cf. Scalise 1984). Therefore, it
was suggested that the head position could be a parametric feature, so that the morphology of
a language is either left-headed or right headed, depending on the language (Lieber 1992;
Scalise 1992; Selkirk 1982). However, this idea of parametric variation in headedness has
been shown not to be sustainable because in many languages, including Mandarin Chinese
and Vietnamese, there are both left-headed and right-headed compounds (Ceccagno and
Scalise 2006; Ceccagno and Basciano 2009; Packard 2000). A language like Nizaa (Benue-
Congo, Cameroon) even has an almost equal number of right-headed and left-headed N-N
compounds (Pepper 2010). Appah (2013a) has shown that Akan endocentric N-N compounds
are mostly right-headed, but there are left-headed and dual-headed N-N compounds as well.
Sometimes, depending on which constituent shares what properties with the compound,
a distinction is drawn between a formal head and a semantic head, which may not necessarily
be coextensive (cf. Abakah 2004; Katamba and Stonham 2006; Scalise and Guevara 2006;
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Selkirk 1982). This is especially the case in constructivist approaches (Lieber 1980, 1989;
Selkirk 1982; Lieber 1992), where the head determines all properties of the compound
through the mechanism of feature percolation (see Blevins (2006) for the distinction between
The semantic head is the constituent that shares its lexical conceptual information with
the whole compound, so that the compound will be a hyponym of the semantic head (Scalise
and Guevara 2006: 190). That is, the class of elements denoted by the compound will be a
subset of the class of elements denoted by the head of the compound. For example, table mat,
is a type of mat, the head. The formal head is the constituent that shares its formal features
(lexical category and subcategorization frame) with the whole compound, so that the whole
compound has the same distributional properties as its formal head (Scalise and Guevara
2006: 190). That is, mat can occur where table mat is expected to occur without a drastic
change in the meaning of the construction, but the same cannot be said about the non-head
constituent table occurring alone where table mat is expected. Booij (2012: 79) sums this up
nicely in the observation that “headedness of a compound is not only relevant for its formal
morphological head. Dressler (2006), for example, argues that the compound pickpocket has
no semantic head because the referent is not named in the compound itself. Pick is the
syntactic head because it selects pocket as its internal argument. The morphological head is
pocket because when the compound is pluralized, the plural marker attaches to pocket (as in,
pickpocket-s not pick-s-pocket). Dressler (2006: 32-33) again argues that even languages that
have either predominantly or exclusively left-headed compounds may have the tendency to
mark inflectional categories on the right constituent. However, the problem, as discussed in
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the literature (Bauer 2010, 2008; Booij 2012), is that the position of the inflectional element
may be a default in the language and not necessarily identify a morphological head.
presence implies that we are unable to account for all the properties of some complex unit.
it is assumed that there are no exocentric derived words (Scalise and Guevara 2006; Scalise;
Bisetto and Guevara 2005). This is captured in Bisetto and Scalise’s (2007) formulation of the
This principle does not capture the whole truth, however, as Bauer (2008: 54-55) has argued
that studies have shown that the effect of exocentricity may be realized through both
affixation (Haspelmath 1993; Ralli 2013) and conversion (Schönefeld 2005). Booij (2012: 82)
also holds the view that the so-called exocentricity is just a special use which “is not unique
When a teacher wants to address a pupil whose name she does not now, she might say:
That red sweater should shut up, meaning that the pupil with the red sweater should
keep his mouth closed. Hence, this use of compounds appears to be a conventionalized
use of words, in which the word for a part denotes the whole (pars-pro-toto)
(Booij 2012: 82).
Because of the wide variety in the formal and semantic properties of exocentric compounds, it
has to be noted that Booij’s observation holds true for only a subset of exocentric compounds.
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This will become clear from the discussion of Bauer’s (2010, 2008) typology of exocentric
compounds in section 5.
compounds, both formal and semantic properties of the compounds have to be taken into
account. Thus, Scalise and Guevara (2006: 192-193) base their definition of exocentricity on
the distinction between formal head and semantic head, arguing that “neither the notion of
formal head, nor the notion of semantic head, considered separately, suffice to define a
have at least one formal head and one semantic head which must be coextensive. If a
compound realizes any other possibility, so that, in a compound with one formal head and one
semantic head, the two do not coincide, the compound will be exocentric. Hence, Bauer
(2010: 174) observes that exocentric compounds have to be defined negatively, as the
remnant that is left after a well-defined group (endocentric compounds) has been removed.
Scalise and Guevara’s approach suggests that we have to distinguish between formal
exocentricity and semantic exocentricity, based on the distinction between formal head and
semantic head respectively (cf. Scalise and Guevara 2006: 194-202). I believe that, if we paid
close attention to the literature, we would have to accept this position. For example, Booij
argues that:
what have been called exocentric compounds or bahuvrihi compounds are a specific
semantic category of endocentric compounds based on metonymy: a part of an entity is
used to refer to the whole entity. This is what is at stake with the classical English
example of a Bahuvrihi compound redskin. (Booij 2002: 143)ii
There are cases where the constituents of the so-called exocentric compound belong to a
completely different word class from the word class of the resultant compound. Here, we can
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say that even if the putative exocentric compound can be regarded as semantically
accept that the compound is formally exocentric because its syntactic category cannot be
shown to emanate from its constituents. Such constructs legitimize the distinction between
Bauer (2010, 2008) characterises exocentric compounds as those which fail the
hyponymy test. It would appear, then, that Bauer makes exocentricity a purely semantic
matter. However, Bauer’s formulation of the nature of exocentricity shows clearly that the
morphosyntactic notion of word class has to be taken into consideration. Bauer (2010: 167)
observes that exocentric compounds may fail the hyponymy test in a number of ways:
of the distinction between formal and semantic exocentricity. Various versions of this position
exist in the relevant literature, including Plag (2003: 145-246) who mentions semantically
Ralli and Andreou who distinguish between formal and semantic exocentricity in their work
on Greek compounds (cf., inter alia, Ralli and Andreou 2012; Ralli 2013; Andreou and Ralli
2015).
Based on the above discussion, I will characterise exocentricity as either the situation
where no constituent of a complex unit can be designated as the head or the situation where
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I observe, in this paper, that the distinction between formal exocentricity and semantic
Deconstructing exocentricity this way makes it easy for us to see that certain compounds that
because some formal property is not deducible from the constituents. This is the case for
As noted in the introduction, two main strands of research have attempted cross-linguistic
exocentric compounds and the appropriate terminology for discussing them. Scalise and
subordinate and coordinate (Scalise and Bisetto 2009; Bisetto and Scalise 2005) have
exocentric versions. They also deal with the syntactic category of the input and of the output
as well as their structural types and combinations. However, for our purpose, their approach
would not be helpful. Therefore, in this section, I will present Bauer’s typology of exocentric
compounds, setting the stage for section 6, where I present exocentric compounds in Akan.
The types posited by Bauer (2008, 2010) are bahuvrihi, exocentric synthetic, transpositional
in turn.
Sanskrit expression is commonly used as a cover term for exocentric compounds (cf., inter
alia, Bloomfield 1933; Katamba and Stonham 2006; Marchand 1969). Bahuvrihi is the type of
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compound in which the whole is not a hyponym of either constituent. Rather, it “expresses
some salient facet of the denotatum” (Bauer 2008: 56). The compound bahu vrihi ‘much rich’
itself exemplifies this type of compound because it may refer to ‘one who/which has much
rice’ although none of the constituents names a person. This is the possessive interpretation of
bahuvrihi compounds.
Regarding the English example red-eye which does not denote anything which
possesses red eye but means “cheap whisky/overnight flight”, Bauer (2010: 167) observes
that the compounds refers to that which causes red eye – the cheap whisky or overnight flight.
Thus, from Bauer (2008, 2010), we may distinguish at least two types of bahuvrihi
In terms of form, Bauer observes that the bahuvrihi compound par excellence is made
up of an adjective and a noun which is the possessed element and often “denotes a person or
an object which has a NOUN and which is ADJECTIVE” (Bauer 2008: 56). A noun, a verb or a
example, in Table 1, we find various instances of bahuvrihi compounds in which a head noun
(marked with an asterisk) is followed by a modifier (adjective, quantifier, verb and noun).
Bauer (2008: 58-59), observes that the exocentric analysis of bahuvrihi compounds, suggests
that there is an unexpressed head which carries at least some features of the denotatum of the
whole. Thus, for the English example, red cap which is [-human], we have to assume that the
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unexpressed feature in the head position is [+human] because the compound refers to a
human entity.iii
An alternative analysis denies that such compounds are exocentric. Rather, they are
synecdoche. The problem I see with this analysis is that it may not be able to account for the
full range of bahuvrihi compounds. For example, as indicated in (n.ii), it is not clear how such
Chinese compounds as dōngxi ‘thing (lit. east + west)’ and jiānghú ‘vagabond (lit. river +
lake)’ may be analysed in this way. The same can be said about the Tzutujil compound
kolwachixik ‘wake up quickly (lit. basket + face)’, as hinted at in Bauer (2008: 60-61).
Finally, Bauer (2008: 59-61), observes that sometimes the bahuvrihi compound may
verbal bahuvrihi. Crucially, in the adjectival bahuvrihis, the head is not an adjective and the
verbal bahuvrihi does not contain a verb at all. Thus, the terminology is purely inspired by
how the relevant compounds are used and so going back to the sense in which a compound
may fail the hyponymy test, we see that these compounds are exocentric because “they […]
function as a member of a word class which is not the word class of their head element”
Determining the word class of the Akan bahuvrihi compound will not be an issue in the
discussion because compounding in Akan is a noun-forming process and the compounds are,
Next in Bauer’s typology is the exocentric synthetic compound. The term synthetic
(sometimes, verbal nexus) is ordinarily reserved for compounds with deverbal nominal heads
(marked in English, for example, by -er or -ing) or deverbal adjectives (marked by -ed or -
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ing) which inherit the internal arguments of the underlying verbs. An example is shopkeeper
in which keeper (the head) contains the verb keep and the agentive suffix -er and the modifier
This type of synthetic compound is endocentric. For example, Katamba and Stonham
(2006: 321) begin their discussion of verbal compounds with the words: “[o]ne class of
In the exocentric synthetic compound, there is no morpheme like English -er, which
corresponds to the external argument of the verb. Rather, the head verb and its internal
argument form a noun that denotes the entity that performs the role of the external argument.
In the French compound gratte-ciel ‘skyscraper’ (lit. scratch-sky), only the verb and its
internal argument are present but the compound as a whole refers to the external argument –
Bauer’s examples, which are structurally quite varied, are in Table 2. The first two
examples contain head V*s and N internal arguments. The third example contains a head V*
and an adjectival subject complement. In the fourth example, the head V* has a verbal direct
object. The last example also has a V* head and an N object but the compound is an abstract
noun and not an agentive noun, making it similar to English activity-denoting compounds like
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Interestingly, the constituents designated as the head of the nominal compounds are verbs.
This appears inconsistent with the result expected from applying the IS A test (Allen 1978).
That is, since the heads are verbs, it would be expected that the compounds would be verbs.
This, however, makes sense in the context of the distinction between syntactic and semantic
heads; the compounds have formal heads but lack semantic heads because, for example,
whereas the Japanese compound tsume-kiri [nail+cut] refers to the activity designated by the
verb phrase, the compound denotes the instrument for performing the activity ‘nail clipper’.
This shows that the key consideration in characterizing a compound as exocentric, in this
case, is semantic, so that, even compounds that are formally/syntactically headed can be
exocentric because they fail the hyponymy test (Bauer 2010). This lends support to the
The exocentric synthetic compound mostly refers to the agent of the denotatum of the
compound. However, there are instances where the compound has an activity/action rather
than agentive reading. It may also be an abstract noun (Bauer 2010: 170). Thus, an important
feature of the exocentric synthetic compound is that, it is only an aspect of the meaning of the
compound that is not expressed in the compound – the agent/instrument or the action. So,
ultimately, the meaning of the compound “can be deduced from the meaning of the verb and
its argument and the unexpressed agent or action” (Bauer 2010: 171).
We have seen from the two types of exocentric compounds described above that usually, only
an aspect of the meaning of the compound that is not present in the compound. In the
exocentric synthetic compound, for example, it is the agentive or instrumental meaning that is
not coded in the compound. In a transpositional exocentric compound it is only the word class
of the output compound that is not overt (Bauer 2010: 171). Thus, the meaning of the
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transpositional exocentric compound is clear, only that it “functions as a member of an
unexpected word-class” (Bauer 2008: 64). This makes it an extreme case of formal
constituents and that of the output, making the exocentric synthetic compound look like
As Table 3 shows, typical examples would be ones in which two adjectives are interpreted as a
noun, two nouns interpreted as a verb, a sequence of verb and adjective interpreted as a noun
and a sequence of verb and noun is interpreted as an adverb (see, Bauer 2010: 172).
Bauer (2008, 2010), identified a class called exocentric co-compounds. This is the class of
coordinate compounds in which two constituents enjoy parity in terms of their importance in
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Bauer (2010: 172) argues that there are virtually no endocentric co-compounds. The few
attested ones are the appositional compounds like singer-songwriter which refers to a person
who is both a singer and a songwriter. The problem with this classification is that such
compounds are not endocentric in the regular sense in that the referent is not made up of a
‘singer’ and a ‘songwriter’. Rather, each constituent characterises a separate property of the
referent, and enjoys parity in sharing head-like characteristics (Katamba and Stonham 2006;
Fabb 1998).
Whilst Haspelmath (2002) treats them as exocentric compounds, Plag (2003: 147)
suggest that they are right-headed, based on the fact that the plural inflectional marker
observed, this position is not totally sustainable “since right-edge inflection is a default in
English” (Bauer 2010: 172) as evidenced by plural marking in compounds like trade-offs,
pickpockets, model Ts, mother-in-laws, etc. in which the constituent that bears the inflection is
Finally, some scholars regard such constructs as phrases and not compounds (cf. Adams
2001: 82). However, as Bauer (2010: 172) observes, this view does not tell us anything
beyond informing us that the constituents are coordinated, thus, shifting the problem of the
characterisation of the compounds from the domain of morphology to the domain of syntax.
According to Bauer (2010) this type arises when a compound fails the hyponymy test because
the head element or the compound as a whole has a metaphorical interpretation. Examples
include dust bowl ‘an area with no vegetation’, catlick ‘quick wash’. It may also arise when
the head has metonymic interpretation (e.g., phone neck ‘pain in the neck caused by using a
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phone’, or the whole compound is metonymic (e.g., bear skin ‘hat won by certain soldiers’).
For an extensive study of such compounds, see Benczes (2006) and for the appropriateness of
the label of exocentricity for these compounds, see Bauer (2010: 174).
In this section, I discuss the classes of Akan exocentric compounds, following the
characterisation of the types of exocentric compounds in section 5. For the present paper, I
“two or more stems”, including reduplicated forms. I should point out that, although Akan
compounds may be contain more than one stem, they are invariably binary-branching and the
usefulness of treating some reduplicated forms as compounds will become clear later when I
In the discussion, I distinguish between the relation obtaining between the constituents
within the compound and the overall interpretation of the compound which invariably
because they are rare in Akan (Appah 2015), much in agreement with the fact that co-
In section 6.1, I discuss bahuvrihi compounds, noting that we may distinguish between
possessive and non-possessive types. The second type of bahuvrihi compounds identified by
Bauer (2010), the “causer type” is not attested in Akan. This is the type in which the
unexpressed semantic feature is the causer of the denotatum of the compound, as exemplified
In section 6.2, I deal with exocentric synthetic compounds. I distinguish two subtypes –
participant and non-participant exocentric synthetic compounds. The former are nouns which
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refer to one of the participants in the event designated by either the verb or the denotatum of
the compound (because sometimes the event is expressed by the whole compound). The latter
refers to the action, state, manner or the fact of the event designated by the predicate.
In the formal representation of the compounds, I suggest that all the compounds
ultimately instantiate the schema in (6) which generalizes over all compounds in which a
crucial semantic feature of the whole is not present in the constituents. There are extreme
cases where the meaning of the compound may not be directly related to the meaning of the
individual constituents. That is, the compound pairs a form and a meaning directly, because
the meaning is that of the construction and may not necessarily relate to those of the
constituents. The parenthesized portion of the semantic pole expresses this observation that
the meaning of the whole may be optionally related to the meanings of the constituents.
Where the meaning of the compound can be shown to be related to the meaning of either
constituent or to their combined meaning, but the meanings of the constituents do not exhaust
operator (the unindexed SEM) over the meaning of the compound, or the meaning of the
As noted in section 5.1, Bahuvrihi is the type of compound in which the whole is not a
hyponym of either constituent. Rather, the compound refers to a salient property of the
denotatum, which is not named in the compound (Bauer 2010). The bahuvrihi compounds in
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my database may be classified in various ways. Following Bauer (2008, 2010), I distinguish a
possessive type (Table 5) and a non-possessive type (Table 6) which I discuss them in turn.
The possessive bahuvrihi compound refers to the possessor of its denotatum. For example, the
Akan compound ìtsìr̀ kɛ̀sé ‘big head’, kɔ̀ǹtséńtséń ‘long neck’ and ànàǹtá ‘crooked legs’ refers
to the entity that possesses a big head, long neck and crooked legs respectively.
In terms of the categories of the constituents and the relation obtaining between them within
the compound, we see that the possessive bahuvrihi compounds mostly have N-A structure,
where the nouns refer to body parts such as ìtsíŕ ‘head’, àsóá ‘ear’, àkòmá ‘heart’, and kɔ́ń
‘neck’. The adjectives tend to be either dimension adjectives, like kɛ̀sé ‘big’, and tséńtséń
‘long’ or physical property adjectives like hyèẁ ‘hot’ (Dixon 2004; Osam 1999).
The relation between the constituents within the [N-A]N compound may be spelt out as
“having/is”. That is, [Ni R Aj]Nk translates into “Ni having property Aj” or “Aj predicated of
22
There are a number of N-N structures as well. Here too, the right-hand constituent may
describe a property of the left-hand constituent, as in ànàǹtá ‘crooked legs’, in which náń
The relation between the constituents of the N-N possessive bahuvrihi compound may also
be: “Left-hand constituent is like right-hand constituents.” This is seen in àsò kɛ̀tɛ́, in which
the lefthand constituent àsó ‘ear’ is likened to kɛ̀tɛ́ ‘mat’. Thus the relation between the
constituents here may be spelt out as “is like”. That is, [Ni R Nj]Nk translates into “Ni is like
Nj”. Thus, àsò kɛ̀tɛ́ is àsó ‘ear’ which is like kɛ̀tɛ́ ‘mat’. See (9).
The only example with an N-V structure (tsìr̀ pá ‘bald person’) has a stative verb, which is
translatable into English by an adjective. In other words, this is a type of compound that may
The pattern is, however, not unique to Akan because Bauer (2008: 58) lists many examples of
verb-noun bahuvrihi compounds from five languages in which the property concepts are
expressed by the verb because, in those languages, adjectives either constitute a very small
23
Finally, reduplicating àsóá ‘ear’ forms the word àsòásóá ‘rabbit’.
This
pattern of
forming a word for a rabbit is somewhat comparable to how the word for mule is formed in
Koasati (see Table 1), differing only in that Akan reduplicates the word for ear to get rabbit,
whilst Koasati combines the noun, ear, and an adjective. However, this pattern of forming a
bahuvrihi compound through reduplication is not yet reported in the literature, probably
though, that this may not be unique to Akan, since reduplication is employed for various
With regard to the over all interpretation of the compound, the speaker must look
beyond the internal semantic relations to find the extra-compositional semantic feature, what
Bauer (2008: 58-59) calls this an unexpressed element in the head position which carries
some features of the denotatum. For all the compounds in Table 5, except the last one, we
have to assume that the unexpressed semantic feature is “possessor”. Formally, Bauer (2008:
58-59) represents this as a zero morph that carries the feature [+human]. An alternative
analysis posits no zero morph. Rather, the unexpressed semantic feature is treated as an
operator over the denotatum of the compounds (Appah 2013b, 2015), as shown in (11).
I believe this alternative rightly construes the problem at hand as a semantic and not a formal
one. Thus, there is no need to posit a zero morph which will be an absolute necessity in a
The non-possessive bahuvrihi compound is the type that does not refer to the possessor of the
denotatum of the compound. It is mostly difficult to tell the meaning of the compound by
24
looking at the meaning(s) of the constituents because there is usually no link between the
semantics of the constituents and that of the referent. See examples in Table 6.
In terms of the categories of the constituent of the compounds, we see that there is a head
noun that may occur on either side and a modifier that may be a noun, an adjective or a
numeral. Thus, with regard to the internal syntax, these compounds are all headed because
there is a discernable head-dependent relation within the compound. This is consistent with
the view that syntactically all compounds are headed because they are generated by the same
rules that generate endocentric compounds (cf. Katamba and Stonham 2006; Plag 2003). This
should not be interpreted to mean that there are no exocentric compound (Booij 2002; Pepper
2010), because an exocentric compound is one which fails the hyponymy test because it either
has no head or some crucial semantic feature needed for interpretation is missing.
The membership of this class is semantically diverse. One group refers to an entity by
metaphorically extending a salient property of the denotatum to the entity in question, so that
the compound has to be interpreted metaphorically. For example, in ǹtr̀ ɔ̀bànáḿ ‘weakling’
the referent’s lack of physical strength is compared to the physical properties of náḿ ‘fish’,
which is further modified by the even more fragile physical properties of cooked ǹtr̀ ɔ́bá
‘garden egg’. Similarly, in àbírékyíré ábɔ́dwèsɛ́ ‘elephant grass’ (lit., goat beard), sometimes
25
referred to as ɔ́bòǹsáḿ ábɔ́dwèsɛ́ (lit. Satan’s beard), the fact of how difficult it is to uproot
the plant due to the strength of the root is what earns the plant the nickname goat’s/Satan’s
beard. Therefore, in characterizing the semantics of these compounds, we have to say that the
denotatum possesses a property that may be ascribed to the referent of the bahuvrihi
Finally, there are other Akan non-possessive bahuvrihi compounds whose meanings are
simply impossible to tell by looking at those of the constituents. They include m̀ móá náń ‘a
lost course’ (lit. animal legs), òdwáńkɔ́kɔ̀ɔ́ ‘a dog’ (lit. red sheep) and àsòàhyéẃ ‘difficulty’
(lit. hot ear). This makes such compounds behave like the English compound hotdogs
(12). The meaning is a constructional property, not related to the meanings of the constituents.
To finish the discussion on bahuvrihi compounds, I should like to mention that Bauer’s (2008:
56) observation that bahuvrihi compounds typically denote people (especially as nicknames),
animals and plants, is largely confirmed by the Akan data. For example, all the bahuvrihi
compounds in Table 5 refer to humans except one which refers to an animal. A number of
bahuvrihi compounds in Akan also refer to plants, including àbírékyíré ábɔ́dwèsɛ́ ‘elephant
grass’ (Table 6). There are, however, a number of these compounds that are abstract, including
26
6.2. Exocentric Synthetic compounds in Akan
There are two constructs in Akan that fit the description of exocentric synthetic compounds as
described in section 5.2. The first construct is uniquely exocentric with a characteristic tonal
melody. The second is typically analysed as endocentric in the Akan compounding literature
(Anderson 2013; Anyidoho 1990). However, Appah (2013b), working with Grimshaw’s
(1990) definition of a synthetic compounds as one in which one constituent takes an argument
which must be satisfied in the compound, argued that those compounds can be analysed as
exocentric synthetic compounds. That position is taken as a point of departure in this paper. In
discussing this, I distinguish between the action/event designated by the predicate and the
participants involved in the action. The compounds in this class may refer to either the action
or the participants (cf. Payne 1997: 225-230). Thus, I isolate two main classes of exocentric
The first class of exocentric synthetic compounds is the participant nominals. There are three
types – those that refer to the agent or the patient of the denotatum of the compound and those
that refer to the location of the action/event designated by the predicate. The agentive and
patient types have [V-N]N structure, where the noun is the internal argument of the verb. This
makes the construction look like straightforward lexicalisation of verb phrases. However, the
compounds refer to one of the participants in the action designated by the verb or to some
In the agentive type, the compound refers to the agent of the action/event designated by
the compound, as exemplified by the compounds in Table 7. For instance, the literal meanings
of the compounds in the first and second rows are ‘fetch water’ and ‘attend funeral’
27
respectively. However, the two refer to the person who fetches water and the person who
iv
Table 7. Agentive exocentric synthetic compounds in Akan
Compound Constituents Gloss Translation Pattern
kɔ́ǹsúó kɔ́ + ǹsúó fetch + water one who fetches water V-N
kɔ́àyíé kɔ́ + àyíé attend + funeral one who attends funerals habitually V-N
kɔ́ànyíná kɔ́ + ànyíná fetch + firewood one who fetches firewood V-N
bɔ́ɔ̀tiré bɔ́ + etíré plait + hire one who plaits hair/hair dresser V-N
bɔ́ǹsúó bɔ́ + ǹsúó hit + water professional car wash(er) / one who V-N
washes cars
díàwúó dí + àwù cause + death murderer (this is a surname) V-N
kúm̀ kɔ́ḿ kúḿ + kɔ́ḿ kill + hunger early-maturing maize variety V-N
kyέǹkwáń kyέ + ǹkwáń share soup one who shares soup V-N
hwéǹkwáń hwé + ǹkwáń sweep/collect + soup one who likes to eat foods that V-N
include soup
díàbórɔ́ dí + àbórɔ́ engage in + wickedness a malevolent person V-N
díàsɛ̀m̀ pá dí + àsɛ̀m̀ pá do + good things a benevolent person V-N
sò~sɔ̀ kànéá sɔ́ + kànéá RED~turn on + light fire fly V-N
This additional meaning component is expressed as an operator over the denotatum of the
compound, as schematized in (13), which states that the compound refers to the agent of the
The second type of participant exocentric synthetic compound is the patient type. It refers to
the entity that undergoes the effect of the denotatum of the compound. For example, the first
compound in Table 8 refers to the entity that suffers a misfortune rather than the one that
causes the misfortune. The other refers to an animal that is located somewhere, rather than the
one “locating” something somewhere. Again, the meaning, patient, is external to the
compound.
28
Table 8. Patient exocentric synthetic compounds in Akan
Compound Constituents Gloss Translation Pattern
díàmìá dí + àmìá suffer + state of being one who has suffered a V-N
helmed in misfortune.
dáàmòná dá+àmòná sleep+hole an animal that dwells in holes V-N
To sum up, we observe that generally in these compounds, rather than mention the entity that
characteristic activity or profession or a typical place of abode in the case of the second
example in Table 8, where, although the compound refers to an animal, the animal is not
metonymically in that a characteristic property of the entity is used to represent the whole
entity.
The compounds can be assumed to instantiate the schema in (14) which states that the
compound refers to an entity typically associated with the denotatum of the compound, where
“being associated with” may be interpreted to mean “undergoing the effect of being helmed
in” as in dí àmìá.
The second example in Table 8 is slightly different; it refers to an entity that is associated with
some event/process named by the first constituent which occurs at a location named by the
(15) < [[dá]Ni [àmòná]Vj]Nk ↔ [ANIMAL which habitually does [SEM]i at [SEM]j]k >
29
As noted above, the class of agentive/patient exocentric synthetic compounds has a
characteristic tonal melody [High-Low*-High*(-High)]. v This is the case for all the
compounds except sò~sɔ̀ kànéávi ‘fire fly’. Thus, the difference between the compounds in
this class and the corresponding verb phrase, as can be seen in (16), is the present of this tonal
melody on the compounds and the absence of the same from the verb phrase. Note that this is
This characteristic tonal melody has to be interpreted as a holistic constructional property, one
that uniquely identifies this class of compounds. In other words, the construction itself
imposes this tonal melody, notwithstanding the tones of the individual constituents in
isolation.
The third class of participant exocentric synthetic compounds has an N-N structure (see
Table 9). In this compound the left-hand constituent mostly names a concrete object such as
àfí(é) ‘house/home’, m̀ -mòfrá ‘children’, dùá ‘tree’, etc., and, in one instance, an activity –
àkɔ́ḿ ‘ritual dance (of the traditional priest)’. Note that àkɔ́ḿ is an action nominal derived
from the verb kɔ́ḿ ‘to perform the ritual dance’ through the prefixation of a-. The right-hand
30
constituent, on the other hand, is always a locative noun like àsé ‘underside/bottom’ and dó
‘top’.
The noun that is formed usually refers to a location in time or space. I found one example
where the compound refers to a location in time - m̀ mòfráásé ‘childhood (lit. children under)’.
Here the denotatum is not an actual location – the underside of children. There is no such
place. The only conceivable physical space will be the soles of the children’s feet. However,
that is not even a possible interpretation as far as this compound is concerned. The left-hand
constituent names children, but the compound refers to childhood – the period when some
humans could be referred to as children. It is in this sense that this compound is exocentric.
Where the compound names a location in space (physical location), it could refer to the
space for performing the activity named by the left-hand constituent, as in the case of
àkɔ́ḿásé which refers to the space where àkɔ́ḿ, the ritual dance, is happening. Here, the right-
hand constituent refers literally to the underside or bottom of the ritual dance. Needless to say
that the ritual dance itself cannot have a bottom, although the person performing the dance
can conceivably be said to have an underside, which will be the sole of the person’s feet.
Thus, àkɔ́ḿásé has to be regarded as exocentric because the compound does not refer to just
where the feet of the dancer treads but the whole setting, including the people watching the
31
(17) < [[X]Ni [Y]Nj ]Nk ↔ [ LOC [SEM]i ]k >
|
< [[àkɔ́ḿ]Ni [ásé]Nj ]Nk ↔ [ LOCATION for àkɔ́ḿi ]k >
Finally, in other cases, the right-hand constituent actually names a part of the left-hand
constituent which is a physical location. However, as their meanings show, what the
compound actually refers to is outside of the compound. This is the case in àfíásé ‘prison (lit.
the bottom of a house)’, dùá- ásé ‘name of a town (lit. bottom of a tree)’ and ḿbóáduá dò
As indicated in section 6.2, aside from the subclass of participant exocentric synthetic
but which Appah (2013b) argued that they could be analysed as exocentric synthetic
compounds. Recounting the whole argument in Appah (2013b) is beyond the scope of this
paper. However, for completeness, I include some salient parts of the argument.
This is a very common type of compound in which a verb and its internal argument
occur, usually with the linear order inverted. The compounds are usually of varied semantic
characterisation, mostly nouns that refer to the action, manner of carrying out the action, the
fact of the action occurring, the result of the action, etc. This is exemplified by èdzìbàǹdzí ‘act
In these compounds, the internal argument of the verb assumes a generic non-referential
function and the meaning of the whole compound can somehow be worked out from the
meaning of the verb and that of its argument. However, it will not be accurate to claim that
they are endocentric compounds because they fail the hyponymy test. Whereas the verb is the
selecting element in the construction, it cannot be said to be the formal head of the compound
32
because it does not have the category of the whole. In like manner, the left-hand noun
member cannot be said to be the semantic head because it does not have the full complement
Previous accounts of these Akan compounds follow some accounts of English compounds
like shoemaker in assuming that the right-hand constituent in the Akan compound is
nominalized prior to becoming a part of the compound and that the nominal syntactic
category and the other properties percolate from the nominalized right-hand constituent.
Appah (2013b) argued that, given the fact that in most cases there is no formal making of the
putative prior nominalization of the right-hand constituents, we need not be forced into
claiming that such compounds are endocentric and that, following Bauer (2008, 2010), we
may still analyse them as synthetic compounds, without committing to defending the prior
not necessarily a compound with a deverbal head constituent. Rather, a synthetic compound,
argument which must be satisfied in the compound. As she puts it, “[t]he essential difference
between the root and synthetic compounds, then, is in the argument-taking properties of their
33
heads. The characteristic differences between the two kinds of compounds follows from this
Given this definition and the implication that the potential head of the N-V compound
has the wrong syntactic category, Appah (2013b) argued that we have to assume that the
syntactic category does not come from either constituent. Rather, it is a constructional
property. Appah (2015) has subsequently defended this position, arguing that the syntactic
category of all Akan compounds are inherited from a constructional meta-schema for
compounding which is pre-specified to bear a syntactic category – N. Thus, the fact that the
compound in question does not have a nominal head is not a problem because the meta-
The action nominal exocentric synthetic compound also has a characteristic tonal
melody, where the tones on all the syllables in the first constituent of the compound are low.
All the tones in the second constituent are also low except the last, if the second constituent
has more than one syllable. Monosyllabic second constituents bear high tones. This tonal
melody occurs irrespective of the tonal melodies of the individual constituents in Isolation.
Thus, the tonal melody may also be properly construed as a constructional property of the
action nominal exocentric synthetic compound; the construction imposes this tonal melody.
As noted in section 5.3, the transpositional exocentric compound is the type in which only the
word class of the compound is not overt, meaning that the compound functions as a member
of a word class that is different from either constituent. Examples of Akan transpositional
exocentric compounds are those in which two verbs compounded yield a noun (Table 11).
34
Table 11. Transpositional exocentric compound in Akan
Compound Form Gloss Translation Pattern
tútá tú+tá uproot + fart a weed V-V
tséká tsé+ká hear+say hearsay V-V
prɛ̀hwɛ́ prɛ̀+hwɛ́ tap+see gossiping V-V
gyédzí gyé+dzí receive + eat faith/belief V-V
kámá ká+má say+give intercession V-V
kàsákyérɛ́ kàsà+kyèrɛ̀ talk+teach/show counselling V-V
dzímá dzí+má eat+give intercession V-V
sɔ́hwɛ́ sɔ́+hwɛ́ try+see tribulation/temptation V-V
sòmákɔ́ sòmà+kɔ́ send+go faithfulness in going on errands V-V
pùtsí-kyérɛ́ pùtsì+kyèrɛ̀ tap+show act of gossiping by touching the V-V
addressee and pointing at the target
The two verbs in each such transpositional exocentric compound may be found occurring
together as verbs in a serial verb construction but the compound that is formed may never be
These compounds provide the strongest evidence for the view that the syntactic
category of the Akan compound is a holistic constructional property that does not depend on
the syntactic category of the constituents. As noted in section 6.2.2, this position is defended
in Appah (2015) with the argument that given the fact that the Akan compound is invariably
nominal, we are led to assume that there is a meta-schema for compounding in Akan which is
pre-specified to bear a nominal syntactic category which all Akan compounds inherit.ix
In terms of their semantics, we see that although the constituents mostly designate
actions, the compounds tend to be abstract. For example, the compounding of gye ‘to receive’
and dzi ‘to eat’ yields a compound that means ‘faith/belief’. These compounds, therefore,
have to be interpreted metaphorically. For instance, as shown in (18), the semantics of gyedzi,
constituents because it has to be understood that, for one to believe, one has to metaphorically
take some message and eat it (cf. Balmer and Grant 1929).
(18) < [[V]i [V]j]Nk ↔ [CONCEPT metaphorically related to [SEM]i and [SEM]j]k >
35
Finally, as noted in section, 4, for this type of compound, we need to distinguish between
semantic exocentricity and formal exocentricity because, in reality we can tell the meaning of
the compounds. It is only the syntactic category which we cannot predict unless we posit a
zero nominalizing morpheme, as done in previous analysis (cf. Anderson 2013; Obeng 2009).
From sections 6.1 to 6.3, I have presented the types of exocentric compounds in Akan based
on Bauer’s typology. I have shown that three of the types are attested in Akan. I have also
shown that two of these types can have subtypes. The typology of Akan exocentric
It is clear from the discussion that each one of these types has a characteristic feature that
7. Conclusion
In this paper, I have discussed exocentric compounds in Akan. I reviewed the literature on
exocentricity, showing that the notion is not easy to characterize. I argued that we have to
distinguish between formal and semantic exocentricity. I reviewed Bauer’s (2010, 2008)
criteria for exocentricity and the types identified. I then discussed 3 main types of exocentric
36
compounds with subtypes in Akan. They are the bahuvrihi compounds, exocentric synthetic
bahuvrihi compounds – the possessive type and the non-possessive type. I also posited two
compound and the participant exocentric synthetic compound. The latter also has three
subtypes – the agentive, patient and locative types of participant exocentric synthetic
Notes
i
Thus, Scalise and Guevara somehow overstate their potential achievement in the study of exocentricity when
they state that they aim “to survey the distribution of exocentric compounding in the world’s languages” (2006:
185, emphasis added).
ii
This position is also argued for in cognitive approaches to compounding which indicate that so-called
exocentric compounds can be interpreted either metonymically and metaphorically (cf. 2005b, 2005a, 2006b,
2006a, 2010). However, it seems rather strong because we find compounds that are not straightforwardly
interpretable by means of metaphor or metonymy. I can immediately think of the Chinese compounds in (1) in
which there is quite a semantic distance between the compounds and their constituents. Thus, the view that
exocentric compounds can be interpreted metonymically and/or metaphorically can be true for only some classes
of exocentric compounds and mostly for those found in the familiar languages of Europe. As Scalise and
Guevara (2006: 199) observe, “[i]n the European Languages, exocentricity is generally restricted to metonymic
conceptual relations between the constituents and the whole (and even more, a relation of inalienable possession,
as in the so-called possessive compounds), very rarely reaching the level of semantic <<freedom>> observed in
Chinese.”
(1) dōngxi ‘lit. east + west = thing’
jiānghú ‘lit. river + lake = vagabond’ (Scalise and Guevara 2006: 199)
iii
A reviewer points out that there is support for the view that an unexpressed head carries the properties of the
denotatum, so that as Ralli (2013: 100, 113) argues based on data from Modern Greek compounds, the so-called
exocentric compounds are not entirely headless because they contain derivational suffixes which are added to the
combination of the two lexemes. I would argue, however, that whereas for a language like Modern Greek and
even Italian (Bisetto 1999 and Zuffi 1981, reviewer’s comment), there may be formal markers that provide
evidence for the claim that an unexpressed head carries the features of the denotatum, for Akan, there is no such
evidence and proponents of similar accounts have had to accept this fact. Anderson (2013) proposed such an
account for Akan verb-internal compounds, but he says in conclusion that exocentric compounds don’t conform
to the expected pattern.
iv
I should point out that, in principle, every Akan noun has a prefix. Thus, we may find these nouns sometimes
bearing vowel prefixes.
v
The star is meant to account for the fact that some compounds have more than one contiguous low tone before
the final high or more than one high tone at the end of the compound. In the Asante dialect, a noun has an
additional final mid vowel, which is said on high tone, if the stem terminates in a high vowel. Thus, whilst the
Fante and Akuapem dialects have nsu ‘water’, Asante has nsu-o ‘water’. The parenthesized high tone accounts
for the optional final vowel.
vi
Note that this is not the regular name of the insect. I included it because that is how people of my age referred
to the insect, when we were little and it has the same structure and semantics as the compounds discussed here.
vii
This is the name of a place at the edge of Wesley Methodist Church in Sekondi - Ghana, where, when I was
growing, the (strong) guys in the neighborhood met at night to talk.
viii
As noted in section 3, ordinarily, various formal tests, would be applied to determine which constituent is the
head of the compound, including determining which constituents carries any inflectional marking (cf. Dressler
37
2006). In Akan the only relevant inflectional marking for nouns is number. However, being abstract nouns, the
compounds that fall into this class do not inflect for number. Thus we cannot determine the head of the
compound by looking at the pattern of number marking.
ix
A reviewer has suggested that the postulation of a meta-schema invalidates the distinction between exocentric
and endocentric compounds and that it could have serious repercussions on how to treat compounds in general in
a way that goes beyond the simple descriptive issues. I agree that the idea of a meta-schema may be quite a
profound claim with potential implications for the analysis of compounding that I cannot appreciate presently.
However, I believe that the postulation of the meta-schema does not invalidate the endocentric-exocentric
distinction in compounding. The meta-schema is significant in accounting for the nominal syntactic category of
the Akan compound and it has been defended in Appah (2013b, 2015). The important point worth making here
is that the fact that we recognise the paring of form and meaning in specific constructions does not prevent us
from recognising higher-level generalisations. The meta-schema embodies one such higher-level generalisation
in the analysis of compounding in Akan. So to go to the reviewers point about the neutralization of the
distinction between endocentric and exocentric compounds, we can say that one possible interpretation of the
existence of the meta-schema is that all Akan compounds are formally exocentric, given that the form class is
inherited from the meta-schema. Rehearsing the argument in the present paper will increase the size of the paper.
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