The perfect aspect and ideophones

d. nɩ wlä Goplë yi bhä kʋ -bha [-kpazebhleku] ADD 1 EVD Gopleu XFUT PST 1 VPC leave NUPT ‘Then Gopleu got up nɩ ɔ yi bhä mʋ a [-kpazebhleku] ADD 1 3 S XFUT PST 1 go EXCL 3 NUPT and he went away.’ [sigo 436–437] In the coda of a narrative the past tense particle wä ‘PST3’ occurs with the completive aspect, as in example 209. 209 nünëa sä Sigo - nʋ wä nä ɔ -nʋ Goplë [-kpazebhleku] folk_tale: DEF way Sigo do: CP PST 3 SP 1 3 S do: CP Gopleu NUPT ‘The story about how Sigo acted towards Gopleu nɩ Goplë -mä a - nʋɔ wä nä [-kpazebhleku] ADD 1 Gopleu ADD 4 NH 1 do:3s:cp PST 3 SP 1 NUPT and Gopleu, how he had dealt with him …’ [sigo 438–440] In example 210 the tense particle wä is used in the last clause of the complication phase of the narrative. What follows is the reaction of the villagers to the woman’s unintentional killing of her child in the bush. Note the temporal point of departure see §9.2.1 at the transition point to the reaction phase of the story. 210 nɩ wlä ŋnɔnɔ yi wä a [sese] ADD 1 EVD woman: DEM come PST 3 DP 4 NUPT ‘And that woman was coming nɩ ɔ ŋʋ wä yunɔ sä a [sese] ADD 1 3 S PUT PST 3 child: DEM VPC DP 4 NUPT and she put that child down. zeli yä yɩ ze [sese] daylight XPER now light_up NUPT When day broke the next morning…’ [lueuzi 68–70]

9.2.4 The perfect aspect and ideophones

The inherent semantic meaning of the perfect aspect occurring in dialogue is to indicate the current relevance of a past event see §2.6.3. In other words, the result of the past event is still valid in the speech situation and often also in the future, as illustrated in example 211. 211 naa - lɔɔ yä -naa yuo bhlä 1 S : GEN DPF XPER 2 S : GEN child: DEF kill ‘… my child lit. mine hit your child’ [sigo 318] In a narrative sequence the perfect aspect in Godié takes on a pragmatic or discourse meaning, which gives a somewhat different instruction for interpretation to the hearer than the perfect aspect in dialogue. Givón 1984:280 has described the use of the perfect aspect in narrative as a marked use, inasmuch as the perfect clause is out of sequence with the rest of a narrative sequence, which normally reports successive events. Givón formulates this meaning of the perfect within a narrative as a pragmatic inference: “If an event occurs counter- sequentially in narrative report, it must then be relevant to a later point in time—later than its original time point in the natural sequence” ibid. 284; emphasis in original. This seems to be exactly the case in Godié narrative. Events that have special significance for the way the narrative subsequently develops are expressed in perfect aspect, that is, by way of the perfect auxiliary yä ‘XPER’, as illustrated in example 212. In this use the free translation into English by present tense is supposed to reflect the counter-sequential nature of the perfect aspect. 212 Fädɩnyʋa wlä wa wlo klë nä Fanti:people: DEF 3 P :say 3 P look: ICP behind SP 1 ‘As the Fanti people were looking behind, ɔ yä kpänyɩ yikʋ mö 3 S XPER much ahead go he had advanced a lot.’ [neyo 28.1–2] Evidence of the counter-sequential nature of the perfect aspect in a Godié narrative is the fact that a yä clause is never introduced with the additive connective n ɩ ‘then’, which in its temporal sense can express only sequentiality. 11 This is in contrast to yi clauses see §9.1.2, which are used to express sequentiality and are hence typically introduced by the connective n ɩ ‘ADD1’. The instruction for interpretation of perfect aspect, that is, a yä clause within a Godié narrative, can thus be formulated as follows: • Attribute relevance beyond the current point in the narrative to the event expressed by a yä clause. Quite often, yä clauses are preceded or followed by an ideophone ‘ID’, which highlights the event and thus underlines its relevance for the narrative as in example 213b and 213c below. Except for the initial and final phases, a yä clause can occur in any phase within the story: in the phase of complication, as in example 213a; at the peak, as in 213b and 213c; or in the phase of resolution, as in example 213d. 12 213 a. kä wa mʋ ylä [-kpazebhleku] ASF 3 P go now: LOP NUPT ‘They were now leaving. wa yä - blɔɔ bhlü -aaa [-kpazebhleku] 3 P XPER road pound until NUPT They go on the road until wa yä - blɔɔ mʋ mimi- [-kpazebhleku] 3 P XPER road VPC do_half_of NUPT they reach half way. Wlä kä wa wlo yɩ nä [-kpazebhleku] EVD ASF 3 P look now SP 1 NUPT Then all of a sudden lit. as they were now looking 11 Marchese 1978:73 also reports this feature of what she calls the “perfective” aspect by relating it to “background events that do not coincide with the regular event line but have taken place at some previous time.” 12 In 218 the clause translated “when they were now looking” contains two cues concerning narrative development: the marker wlä and the set expression kä wa wlo y ɩ see §9.2.5. The set expression -n ni occurs in the following clause. -n ni nyikpotütë [-kpazebhleku] 2 S find black_ants:swarm NUPT there was a swarm of black ants’ [kokoleko 123–127]

b. wuë -