Aspect and modality in Ewe: A survey

This chapter provides a comprehensive description of the expression of aspect and modality in Ewe, a Gbe variety spoken in Ghana and Togo as far as and just across the Togo-Benin border. I strive to augment the existing descriptions of aspect and modality in Ewe and to present new analyses for some old phenomena. A fresh and systematic analysis of markers in the verbal cluster is presented (section 2). A striking relationship between the subjunctive, the third person imperative marker and a consecutive clause marker as manifest in Ewe is examined leading to new hypotheses about their heterosemic relations to the hypothetical conditional introducer and the marker of apodosis in counterfactual conditionals. Some of the Ewe empirical facts that bear on current concerns in linguistic theorising such as the relationship between the habitual and the progressive and whether imperatives in West African languages have overt subjects are addressed. An incipient grammaticalization of a proximative aspectual category is also documented. This chapter together with Essegbey’s (this volume) on the potential, and the analysis of the imperfective aspect constructions in Ewe in the chapter by Ameka and Dakubu (this volume) constitutes a complete description of aspect and modality in Ewe.

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