The structure and function of Dangme adverbs and adverbials

The primary objective of this paper is to unearth the details of what constitutes adverbs in Dangme using the prototype theory. The paper also sheds light on the morphological and structural properties of Dangme adverbs and adverbials. Analyses of the various structures used revealed that Dangme expresses adverbial concepts through the use of core adverbs and quite a large number of ideophonic and reduplicated elements. The morphology and lexical semantics of these three elements place them as integral members that make up the class. It was found that contrary to other Kwa languages, Dangme does not derive adverbs by affixation, but rather by the process of reduplication. It was also observed that Dangme uses adverbials which include nominals with temporal and locative functions, postpositional phrases, and compounded adverbials. Regarding their syntactic properties, Dangme adverbs were discovered to have shared properties; however, for their adverbial counterparts, their structural and distributional properties are influenced mainly by the semantic interpretation they add to the sentences they occur in and the constituents that they scope over.