Complement clause constructions in Nkami

Abstract

Drawing from synchronic natural data, this paper canvasses complement clause constructions (CCC) of Nkami, an endangered Kwa language of Ghana. It raises issues that are of general concern in complementation, syntax, typology and grammaticalization. Among other things, it comes out that unlike other Kwa languages which have only one explicit complementizer, Nkami has two clearly distinct functional complementizers, yɛɛ and bɛɛ. While the former patterns with utterance verbs, the latter collocates with all other complement-taking verbs (CTV). Also, both yɛɛ and bɛɛ perform several other grammatical functions and are diachronically traceable to the verbs yɛɛ ‘say’ and dʒi bɛ/bɛɛ ‘be like’, respectively. Moreover, the CTVs in Nkami may be categorized into five semantic types: utterance/speaking, sensation, emotion, cognition/thinking and secondary (concept) verbs including ʃɛ asɪ ‘begin’, bɔ ‘plan/try/pretend’, sɛ ‘require’ and kpa ‘want’. Lastly, Nkami predominantly demonstrates the sentence-like type of complement clause; and so, except for CCCs that contain a secondary (concept) verb as a CTV, a complement clause in Nkami is virtually open to all morphosyntactic and grammatical ‘privileges’ available to a main clause.