A Morphosyntactic Analysis of Some Fante Habitation Names (econym)

Abstract

This paper is a toponomastic study of some Fante habitation names from a morphosyntactic perspective. Names are given in particular languages whose morphology, syntax and semantics inform their meaning to a great extent (Batoma, 2006). This implies that understanding place (habitation) names hinges on taking a critical look at the internal structure of the word(s) and the syntactic structure that constitute the name besides sociolinguistics, sociocultural and ethno-linguistics domains. The paper investigates the morphological and syntactic structure of about one hundred and fifty (150) Fante habitation (towns/villages) names. It discusses the typology of Fante habitation names under two broad areas; morphological analysis and syntactic analysis. The morphological analysis revealed that some Fante habitation names can be single stems, compounds, inflections (affixation), and reduplication. The study also found that Fante habitation names at sentential level can function as statements, interrogatives or imperatives, while they can be structurally simple, compound, or complex sentence. The habitation names for this study were collected from both primary and secondary sources. The researcher also supported this approach with semi-structured interviews to ascertain the complete structure of the names since some might have been written wrongly or might have undergone some phonological processes.