A comparative study of the basic locative construction in Gurenɛ, Asante-Twi, and Tongugbe

Abstract The chapter examines the basic locative construction (BLC) in three Niger Congo languages spoken in Ghana: Gurenɛ, Asante-Twi and Tongugbe, and discusses the semantics of the verbs that occur within the construction. Using data elicited with a similar set of locative verb stimuli, we demonstrate that the languages differ in the number and type of verbs that occur in the BLC. While Asante-Twi and Gurenɛ employ mostly positional verbs in the BLC, Tongugbe, similar to the other Ewe varieties, uses the locative predicate. Constructionally, the BLCs in all three languages are similar, that is, each of the languages instantiate the schema NP V PostP.