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Share Paper 2735

Aspectual Contrasts in Tutrugbu (Nyagbo)
James Essegbey
40-49 (complete paper or proceedings contents)

Abstract

The Kwa languages of West Africa have been analyzed as either tenseless (Manfredi 1991) or aspect-prominent (Ameka and Dakubu 2008) languages. In this paper I explore whether Tutrugbu, a Ghana-Togo-Mountain (GTM) language spoken in the south-eastern part of Ghana, can also be characterized as tenseless. This is done through an examination of the tense-aspect categories in the language. Tutrugbu has 8 tense and aspectual categories. While 6 of the markers that express these categories can be analyzed without controversy as aspectual, the remaining two can potentially be analyzed as tense. I argue that these two can also be analyzed as aspectual/modal, thereby making Tutrugbu tenseless.

Published in

Selected Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics: African Languages in Contact
edited by Bruce Connell and Nicholas Rolle
Table of contents
Printed edition: $280.00