Adpositions and adpositional relator nouns in Akebu

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents an overview, based on field data, of the adpositional system in Akebu, a Kwa (Ghana-Togo Mountain) language of West Africa. Like other Kwa languages, Akebu has both linear types of adpositions. Prepositions are not numerous and are fully grammaticalized. Two prepositions are used very widely, one of them expressing a comitative meaning and a number of related ones, the other having a generalized locative meaning, as well as other ones. In contrast, postpositions are more numerous, but most of them are weakly grammaticalized relator nouns that express the meanings of locational orientations and keep nominal morphology and independent uses. Still, grammaticalized postpositions are also present, the most common of them being a postposition that expresses apudessive, i.e. near, next to, orientation.