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Share Paper 2138

Does Logba Have an Adjective Class?
Kofi Dorvlo
95-105 (complete paper or proceedings contents)

Abstract

The adjective class can be established in all languages but the exact justification is peculiar to each language (Dixon 2004). In this paper, the author examines the distribution of adjectives in Logba, a sparsely described Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) language spoken by 7,500 people, influenced and threatened by Ewe. He shows that the adjective class comprises seven underived and non-ideophonic adjectives, several derived adjectives, and a number of ideophonic words. Logba has an active noun class system. The author shows that unlike other modifiers such as quantifiers, adjectives do not show concord with the noun head. He also describes the properties of the members of the adjective class and the processes for the formation of derived adjectives. This includes compounding a verb plus its nominal complement, verb reduplication, and suffixation. The findings confirm that Logba is not too different from other Niger-Congo languages in terms of the structural composition of the adjective class and its properties.

Published in

Selected Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference on African Linguistics: Linguistic Theory and African Language Documentation
edited by Masangu Matondo, Fiona Mc Laughlin, and Eric Potsdam
Table of contents
Printed edition: $280.00