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Complete Paper Temperature System of SiyasE and Ewe Franscisca Adzo Adjei University of Education, Winneba 1. Introduction Temperature phenomena are universal, easily perceptible by humans and basic in human categorisation (Wierzbicka 1996). Their conceptualization however, differs from language to language and involves a complex interplay between external reality, bodily experience and subjective evaluation. Temperature terms can therefore be characterized as both embodied and perspectival with regard to their meaning since rather than reflecting an objective image of the external world, they offer a naïve picture based on people’s experience and rooted in their cultural practices. This paper is a comparative work on temperature terms in two Kwa languages in contact. Firsching (2009) notes that the linguistic aspects of the temperature domain have received very little attention apart from some few works which analyzed temperature terms in Baltic languages – Russian and Swedish. Taking inspiration from Firsching, who is currently working on Temperature terms in 15 African languages, the paper investigates the number of temperature terms (TTs hereafter) and the number of basic TTs in the two languages. It will also categorize these terms according to their semantic fields or domains and find out which of these domains are relevant for temperature evaluation in the two languages. The paper is structured as follows: Section 1 presents information on the literature on temperature systems as well as general information on Ewe and Siyase and Section 2 is the set up of data collection. Section 3 presents the findings and discussion whereas Section 4 concludes the paper. 1.1.General Information 1.1.1. Siyasɛ: Genetic Classification Siyasɛ/Siya (Avatime) or Sidemɛ is one of fourteen languages called Togo Remnant, Central Togo or preferably Ghana Togo Mountain (GTM) languages. There is some disagreement about the genetic classification of these languages. This is most likely due to the lack of information on the language, a situation which will hopefully be improved soon by several investigations of GTM languages which are currently taking place (van Putten, 2009, Defina 2010). Heine (1968) classified the languages into two subgroups with the Kwa sub-groups of Niger-Congo. He called these subgroups NA and KA and Siyasɛ was classified as a KA language. Steward (1989) then suggested that the NA and KA groups were better analysed as belonging to two separate branches of the Kwa language family. He claimed that the NA languages belong to the Nyo branch while the KA languages belong to the left Bank branch. This would mean that Siyasɛ is more closely related to some non-GTM languages such as Ewe than it is to other GTM languages in the NA group. Williamson and Blench (2000) then suggested that the NA and KA groups branch out from proto-Kwa, in which case all GTM languages would be relatively equally related to non-GTM languages. Blench (2001) goes further claiming that due to the difficulties encountered when trying to relate GTM languages to Kwa languages, it is better to treat them as a typological group consisting of four genetic clusters coming from Niger-Congo. Kropp Dakubu (2008) argues that GTM languages do form a genetic group, consisting of the subgroups KA and NA, as Heine originally proposed. In her classification, the GTM languages are most closely related to the Tano languages (which include Bia, Akan and Guang). Whatever turns out to be the best classification for GTM languages, it is clear that Siyasɛ is most closely related to its neighbouring languages, Tafi and Nyangbo – a fact recognized by all previous researchers. © 2012 Franscisca Adzo Adjei. Selected Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics, ed. Bruce Connell and Nicholas Rolle, 104-116. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 105 Siyas͑ is spoken in the Volta Region, south-east of Ghana in eight villages: Amedzofe, Biakpa, Dzogbefeme, Fume, Gbadzeme, New Dzokpe, Old Dzokpe and Vane. The most recent estimates of the number of Siyas͑ speakers is likely to be around 10,000 (van Putten 2009, Defina 2009). 1.1.2. Some typological features of Siyasɛ1 Siyas͑ is a tone language with three distinctive level tones, which are mainly used to make lexical contrasts, but also function in the grammatical domain. It has an advanced tongue root-based vowel harmony system. On the syntactic front, Siyas͑ retains a morpho-synactically robust noun class system. It has seven noun classes, six of which consist of singular and plural pairs. The various noun classes are marked by prefixes on the noun (Schuh 1995b). There is concord marking on several types of modifiers and on the verb if the noun is its subject. Mood and Aspect are marked by prefixes on the verb; there is no grammatical tense marking. Grammatical relations are primarily indicated by word order, which is SVO. This is supplemented by subject agreement on the verb but this is largely redundant unless there is no overt subject. Siyas͑ is a pro-drop language and, unless the subject is being emphasized, a known subject will be referred to only by the subject agreement on the verb (Defina 2009: 14). Siyas͑ like many languages of the region, has serial verb constructions (see Ford 1971a, van Putten 2009 for more information on these). In some cases, there is a vowel which precedes the second verb of a serial verb construction and it varies according to the subject and TAM marking of the first verb. (See van Putten 2009, for more information regarding these vowels). Siyas͑ has postpositions and one general locative prepositions ní which must also be used whenever a postposition is used. Possession is indicated by adjacency. The possessor precedes the possessed. With body parts and kin terms, the possessor pronoun is fused with the possessee. There are several clause coordinators. Unfortunately, their function has not been researched into yet and they remain a topic for future study. There are two complementizers: sì is used to introduce a subordinate clause, and gì is used to introduce relative clauses as well as some other subordinate clauses. There is a group of verbs, the copulas and positionals which only occur in the aorist. In all other aspect and mood categories they are replaced by the general copula verb zè. These verbs are the locative copula lí ‘be at’, the equative copular nu ‘be’ and the positional verbs dí ‘sit’, kpàsî ‘be in’ tìnī‘be on’ and sūnū‘hang’. Ewe has a similar distinction between a present and past form of the ‘be at’ copular ‘lè/nɔ.̀ The Siyasɛ pattern is slightly different though because the zè copula is used to replace many verbs and the distinction is not purely one of tense. The zè verb is used to refer to present situations which are not in the aorist. Consider example (1a) (example 10 of Defina 2009). Also, with the exception of lì ‘be at’ which seems to have a present tense specification, all the verbs which it replaces can be used to refer to past situations, for instance in example (1b) (example 11 of Defina 2009). 1. a. è - é ze ní Ɔvanɔ.̀ b. kù – ní – ó ku - kpasi. CM: 1SG PROG be LOC Vane C5S –water – DEF C5S –be. in ‘He is still in Vane.’ ní ɔ ́ - kpɛkpɛ -yɛ LOC C1S black DEF ‘There was water in the black one.’ 1 Information on Siyasɛ typological features draws extensively on Defina (2009) and van Putten (2009). 106 Verbs can be nominalised by reduplicating the verb stem. All de-verbal nouns are placed is Class 5 (see example (2); example 12 of Defina 2009). wlìmìغ ± wlìmìغ ± ku .2 C5S ± write - REDUP ‘writing’ Like many languages of the region, Siyasɛ has ideophones. They are found in all the open word classes: nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs. For example: ɔ̀ -kúkû ‘chicken’, dzɔ́ dzɔ̄ ‘tall’, rìɖì (ɖìɖìɖì) repeatedly’ and srā (srā) ‘smear’. With ideophones, reduplication indicates intensification rather than nominalisation; for instance srāsrā ‘smear a lot’ still functions as a verb rather than a noun. 1.2. Ewe2 Ewe, on the other hand, is a major dialect cluster of Gbe or Tadoid (Capo 1991, Duthie 1996) spoken by about 3 million people in the south eastern part of the Volta Region of Ghana across to parts of southern Togo, as far as just across the Togo-Benin border. Ewe also belongs to the Kwa family of the Niger Congo. It is bordered to the west by Ga-Dangme and Akan, to the north by the GTM languages, for example Síwu, Líkpe, etc. and some Gur languages such as Kabiye. To the east are the Gbe dialects ± Gen, Aja and Xwla ± all of which have degrees of intelligibility with Ewe (Kluge 2000, cited in Ameka and Dovlo 2009). Ewe is also used as a second language in the GTM communities (Ring 1981). It is studied as a subject at all levels of education in Ghana up to the tertiary level. The area where Ewe is spoken is in the tropics. Temperatures therefore vary depending on the seasons of the year. 1.2.1. Some typological features of Ewe Ewe is a tone language with high and non-high tonemes. Complex rising and falling tones also occur. Morphologically, Ewe is isolating with agglutinative features. It makes use of compounding as well as reduplication, triplication and affixation processes in the formation of new words. Nouns have a non-high vocalic prefixes à or –è which are relics of proto Niger Congo noun class markers. The è prefix tends to be elided when the noun is not said in isolation, e.g., the contrast between à-me ‘prefix-person’ and (è -)glí‘prefix-folktale’. Some Temporal nouns have a High tone prefix and they are never elided,égbe ‘today’, ‘éto ‘tonite’ and ‘ázɔ‘now’ (Ameka and Dovlo 2009).
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