Posture verbs in Ewe: A Cross-linguistic overview
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Abstract
According to Ameka and Levinson (2007), poster verbs are the prototypical verbs which define a language type, namely, the type in which a small set of contrastive verbs occur in locative constructions. This study, however, looked at posture verbs in Ewe, especially on how the Ewe people describe location of entities. Mixed designs methods were used in the data collection, these include interviews and observation. Four students taking Ewe as their elective course were chosen purposively for the study. After going through series of activities with the participants, 36 verbs were identified as posture verbs in Ewe. The findings showed that almost all the verbs identify as posture verbs appear with objects, preposition and post position in sentences. This means that posture verbs cannot do without them. It was also realized that different posture verbs can have the same meaning while the same verbs can also have different meaning unless they are put into context before their differences can be shown clearly.
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