Relative Clause Formation in Akan Proverbs and Sentences: Similarities and Differences

This paper discusses relative clause formation in Akan proverbs and normal sentences with particular attention to their similarities and differences. It explores the comparison of the relative clauses in Akan sentences and other specialized genres such as the proverbs. The paper further analyzes the relative clause occurring in both sentence and proverb structures in order to establish sameness and dichotomy in the syntactic uniqueness in both structures. Purposive sampling technique was employed to select the proverbs for this study. In all, twenty-three (23) proverbs were selected for the study. The study adopted the functional grammar approach in the analysis. The study revealed that the relative clause formation in some Akan proverbs and Akan normal sentences has both overt and covert antecedent noun phrases (ANPs). The headless antecedent noun phrase which is seen as a pronominal also undergoes binary mutation in order to account for the antecedent noun phrase and the relativizer which introduces the relative clause. There are also differences in the syntactic positions of the relative clause more especially the sentence structure type. Finally, there is a difference in the syntactic position of the resumptive pronouns in both structures.


Introduction
The relative clause (R /C) has been examined universally as a linguistic phenomenon and its occurrence is widely manifest in all the human languages in the world. It has been strongly revealed that, the constitution of the relative clause cross-linguistically occurs in all natural languages in one form or another [51] . Having examined the relative clause crosslinguistically, it appears much work has been done by some scholars in the English language and some other languages as far as typological study and analysis is concerned [51,54] . A lot of scholars of the Akan language to some extent have done detailed work on Akan normal relative clause [10,47] . Oduro [41] highlighted relative clause formations in Akan proverbs drawing attention to headless antecedent noun phrase where the antecedent noun phrase appears to be covert in the structure. These revelations have called for comparison of the relative clause formation in both the Akan normal sentence and Akan proverb structure. The main body of the article is further sectionalized into the following divisions. The first section briefly highlights the background of the Akan language. The second section deals with the theoretical approach that has been used to do the analysis. In the third section, attention has been focused on both Akan proverb structure and Akan normal sentence. Section four deals with R / C formation in both Akan normal sentence and Akan proverb structure whereas section five treats analysis of both the similarities and the differences of the two structures. The penultimate section will talk about the findings of the study followed by the conclusion.
their second language of communication in commerce and trade [13] . It is estimated that the indigenous Akans constitute approximately 47.5% of the entire population of Ghana [22] .

Theorectical framework of the study
The study uses the functional grammar approach which was originated by Halliday [25] . This same theoretical framework has been adopted by [13,17,24,47,53] in their various write-ups. This functional grammar model stresses on three key functions. These are, 'representational function', 'interpersonal function', and 'textual meta-function'. The writers only adapt the second and third components in this work. Whiles the representational function interprets the world around us, interpersonal functions streamlines the interactions that go on to bring changes in things around us. The functional approach has been used to make description of the communicative function of each of the lexical items forming part of the relative clause. The 'textual' meta-function comes in the picture when messages are organized so as to enable representation and interaction. The 'textual' meta-function links all the linguistic units or elements otherwise called 'text' in a specific structure because they have the edge to assume different functions. Again, the 'textual' meta-function ensures that, the linguistic items in a particular structure should not be treated or considered in isolation but having links or relation to other elements in the structure under consideration. In this regard, the 'textual' meta-function of the functional grammar will be of immeasurable assistance to the writers to be able to analyze the relationship among the linguistic units of the Relative clause and the whole structure of which the relative clause forms part. In order to show similarities and differences in both structures, the study also adopts comparative approach to perform cross-structural analysis of the normal clause and that of relative clause in a specialized genre under consideration.

Proverbs: definition and functions
Over the years, scholars from different disciplines of learning have found it extremely difficult to assign a single universal definition to proverbs. As result of this, Kindstrand [28] cited in [35] believe this failure has always been a headache to many a paremiologist. The above assertion comes as no surprise as there are many reasons which may have accounted for the failure. Careful observations reveal that the socio-cultural diversity, linguistic background, sociogeographical experiences couple with the orientations of people have made it very uneasy to have such common definition of a proverb.
Notwithstanding, many scholars have made several attempts to define proverb in their own ways. Proverbs have been seen as '… a dynamic mode of discourse with unique identity …' [43] . Proverb in another context has also been defined as '… a traditional, conversational didactic genre with general meaning, a potential free conversational turn, preferably with figurative meaning' [39] . Another explanation of proverb is 'a unit of meaning in a specific context through which the speaker and the hearer arrive at the same meaning' [38] . Proverbs are considered as one of the noble genres of African oral tradition that enjoys the prestige of a custodian of people's wisdom and philosophy of life [49] .
By subjecting the above definitions to deductive reasoning, proverbs can best be defined based on specific context of both the speaker and the hearer as well. Therefore, for the purpose of this study, I subscribe to the definition of proverb by Medier: 'Proverb is a short generally known sentence of the folk which contains wisdom, truth, moral, and traditional views in a metaphorical fixed and memorable form and which is handed down from generation to generation' [35] .
As a representation of the traditional wisdom, truth and moral lessons to members of a given community, literature on proverbs has been very encouraging as a lot of prominent writers across the globe have written more on it from different perspectives. Some writers captured proverbs as one of the genres of Africa oral Literature stressing on its importance and usage in a particular community: [20,42,50].
Other writers have also worked more extensively on the role and importance of proverbs in the day to day life of a people laying particular emphasis on its usage in various contexts and occasions: [1,50]. Proverbs have been used as the medium of fostering intergenerational relationships. Some researchers have also done extensive work on proverbs by focusing on its educational wisdom which has been used as a vehicle of enhancing critical thinking skills of certain people [5,40] . The aesthetic value and general wisdom in proverbs cannot be underestimated in this modern era [36,56] . Other researchers have also compiled a good number of proverbs for students and others with interest in reading Akan proverbs to get material to read and equip themselves with knowledge [4] .
Proverbs play some significant roles and for that matter its' ethno-cultural and social functions cannot in any way be underestimated. A number of scholars have outlined many functions of proverbs some examples of which are stated below: Proverbs promote better understanding of the way of thinking of people, revealing the nature of peoples' mindsets and to express both emotional and intellectual attitudes such as sympathy, love, empathy, apology, approval [30] . Proverbs also reflect the ethnography of the people and set out their philosophy, morals, social value and their total way of life. Also, proverbs are sometimes used to praise behaviour, warn against defiance, and advise people to refrain from wrong doing. As backbone to the traditions of societies, proverbs are used to demonstrate and buttress the wisdom of the traditional code of conduct. Finally, cross-ethnographically, proverbs provide didactic and moral lessons to humanity and this helps people live their lives in conformity with the societal norms [1,8] .
The numerous works on proverbs by the above prominent writers across the globe clearly indicate the high rate of interest researchers have developed in this area of study. Irrespective of many publications and research works proverbs have enjoyed in academia, there are still some shortfalls. One area the numerous researchers have fallen short in their research works particularly in Ghana, is by subjecting proverbs to syntactic analysis, comparing the relative clause formation in the Akan normal sentences to that of relative clause in proverbs to bring out their similarities and differences.
This task is what this study seeks to do.

Meaning of relative clause
Relative clauses are said to be 'embedded / subordinate clauses that typically serve as noun modifiers within an NP structure' [48] . Semantically, a relative clause may be characterized as a clause that 'incorporates, as one of its' terms, a nominal which is co-referential with a nominal outside of the clause' [16] , cited in [48]. The implication is that it is the modifying clause which constitutes the relative clause but not the whole of the Noun Phrase.
Relative clause modifies a Head Noun [51] . What this means is that the relative clause says something more about the Head Noun in a syntactic structure. Even though the relative clause phenomenon exists in almost all the natural languages in the world, yet its formation exists in different forms as found in different syntactic structures. For instance, in English language is a Right Branching Direction (RBD). This simply means that relative clauses are formed at the right of the head noun. In English language, the relative clause is introduced by pronouns such as who, whose, which, where, that [55] . The relative clause in English provides sufficient and additional information about the ANP which precedes the R / C in the construction. Studies in relative clause formation is not only unique to Akan alone but has also been studying in various Kwa languages such as Fćngbe [32] , Ewe [2] , Gã [12] , Logba [15] and [29]. Gur languages within the Niger-Congo family also have relative clause in them: Dagbani [ 27 ] , Gurunε [6] , Bùlí [26] , and Benue-congo. Eg. Yoruba [32] .
The phenomenon of the relative clause does not only exit in African languages but other languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Turkish and Hindu [33] . Turkish and Hindu languages are all Left Branching Direction (LBD) in which the relative clauses pre-modify the head noun. There are basically two types of relative clauses, thus Internally-Headed Relative Clause and Externally-Headed Relative Clause [3,9,11,23] and [34]. Available literature on relative clause suggests that some languages across the globe have one type of relative clause; Lakhota [55] , whereas others also have both as in Japanese language [31] .Structurally, the EHRC S are relativized outside the relative clause, however, that of the IHRC S are also relativized within the relative complement.

Materials and methods
The data in this study were all collected from various published and unpublished sources. It should be noted with great emphasis that the proverbs selected are a group of proverbs which have relative clauses in their structure. In this regards, purposive sampling method was employed to select the proverbs for this study. In all, twenty-three (23) proverbs were selected for the study. In the case of the Akan normal sentences, examples in the discourse were primary source originating from the native speaker intuitions of the writers.

Results and analysis
The study has revealed the existence of similarities and differences in the formation of both the Akan Normal Sentence and Akan Proverb Structure as have been illustrated in the various examples. One constituent property both structures share in common is the headless ANP. It has been revealed that, with the headless ANP, the pronominal undergoes a binary mutation in order to account for the headed noun and the relativizer. Both structures also have headed nouns which act as subjects in the sentences they occur. Also, the RES in the RCs in both structures relativize the headed noun which function as subjects structures. Similarly, syntactic dichotomy exists in the lexical positions of the resumptive pronoun in both structures. Thus, whereas the RES in Akan Normal Sentence occurs in the objective case of the relative verb, that of the Akan Proverb Structure also occurs in the subjective case of the relative verb. In terms of form, the resumptive pronoun is seen in the Akan Normal Sentence as an independent lexical item whiles in the Akan Proverb Structure, it is seen as a proclitic of the stem it attaches itself to but its presence in the structure does not seem to be an independent lexical item.

Relative clause formation in Akan
The basic function of the R / C is to throw more light or say something about the ANP. The particle that introduces the Akan R / C is 'a'. This particle has different semantic meanings depending on the particular syntactic slot it occupies in the structure under consideration. The particle 'a' can be used to mean or indicate; which, what where, that, whose, etc. A typical Akan normal sentence containing relative clause is seen in example (1)  In the above example, "Akwadaa no", (The child), is the head and it constitutes the ANP of the relative clause in the structure. The particle 'a' which introduces the relative cause in the structure is referred to as relativizer in study of syntax. The relative clause is the expression in the brackets and it constitutes the restrictive relative clause. In the other way round, the R / C gives information about the ANP. In this example, the R / C specifically describes the ANP 'The child' or better still throws more light to the ANP 'The child' who came here. Careful syntactic observation of the formation of the Akan relative clause reveals that the ANP + R / C will result in the formation of Complex Noun Phrase, which will function as subject in that whole structure.

The structure of the Akan relative clause
The woman who was beaten by Ama. (FT) In example 2a above, the head noun in the structure 'cbaa' comes on the left periphery of the relative clause in the square bracket, 'a Ama hwee no'. The relative clause starts with the relative complementizer, a. This relative complementizer 'a' introduces the relative clause and for that matter it is the RC marker. The noun 'Ama' in the RC is a complement in the structure: Mehyiaa Ama. The past tense verb 'hwee' is followed by a resumptive pronoun 'no' which is a co-referential copy of the noun, 'cbaa'. This co-referential copy agrees in number with the head noun as seen in the sentence. The next lexical item in the structure, 'no' is a complementizer determiner in the sentence "Mehyiaa cbaa no." which has been calved from sentence c in 2a above. In term of function, the NP (Head Noun) + RC + RES (cbaa + a Ama hwee no + no) functions as object of the whole sentence 2a, thus, 'Mehyiaa cbaa [a Ama hwee no] no'. Clearly, we see that relativization in example 2a occurs in object position. This makes the above structure SVO. The Akan RC is postnominal type as the head noun precedes the relative clause. Ewe and Gurene dialects spoken in Ghana also have the SVO structural arrangements. The SVO type of structure appears to be the commonest in all human languages [45] .
2b. Akwadaa [a cdii aduane no] te Nkran. Child [REL 3SG-eat-PST DET] lives Accra. The child who ate the food lives in Accra. (FT) In sentence 2b above, the NP (Head Noun) + RC together functions as the subject in the sentence the whole sentence. The relativization occurs in the subject position of the sentence. In the structure above, the relativization occurs in the subject position of the sentence. Then also, in the complement clause, the resumptive pronoun c is in the subject position of the simple sentence in the clause, thus, 'cdii nkonim.' The syntactic position of the Akan R / C is seen to be in conformity with the universal pragmatic principle that shifts long complex information late in the clause [45] .

The Akan extra posed relative clause
As illustrated in the above examples of the construction of the R / C in Akan, the R / C has been positioned adjacent to the Head Noun as seen in example 1a & 2b. This phenomenon manifests as one of the features of all noun modifiers which occurs in the SVO syntactic structure. There is however sharp contrast to the above phenomenon as there are some kind of syntactic constructions as in the case of Akan where the relative clause is postposed to the end of the main clause (objective case). Extra posed is the name ascribed to such relative clauses [46] . See examples 3a & b for more clarification.

Stacking of relative clause
In Akan, there are some relative clauses which are stacked within the same sentence in relativization. In such situation, there could be several relative clauses in a construction which modify a single antecedent noun phrase. This type of construction looks quite similar to that of the serial verb construction which remains a phenomenon in Akan language. In examples 4a & b above, it is noticeably clear that each example has in it two relative clauses which modify the single NAP in each structure. Observation can also be made from the examples that the relative clauses in each sentence are in direct sequence of each other. The construction does not only occur in Akan conversational discourse but there are also some instances where it manifests itself in the written discourse too.

Relativizers and their constraints
The relativizers and their constraints are all key syntactic properties of Akan relative clauses. In section 4.2, we had a look at Akan relative clause formation. From example 1a, we learned that the R / C in Akan is introduced by a particle 'a' which can occur in different syntactic environments to perform different semantic functions in the sentence. In Akan language, the particle 'a' is an obligatory lexical element in the relative clause. This same particle 'a' is used to connote both singularity and plurality taking into account the semantic of the structure in which it has been The obligatory phenomenon of the Akan relativizer simply agrees with the claim made by Saah [47] that the relative complementizer is compulsory because the deletion or omission of the relativizer in the above constructions would have rendered the constructions ungrammatical.
The second feature of the Akan relativizer is that, it does not change its shape in order to agree in number and in class with the Head Noun In example 6a, the head is plural but in 6b, the head is singular. Regardless of the singularity or the plurality of the head in the above constructions, the relativizer still remains unchanged. Saah [47] has confirmed this by stating that 'whether the relativized NPs are singular or plural, the relative complementizer does not change in shape and form. This phenomenon also exists in Gurenε one of the Northern dialects spoken in Ghana [7] .

The clause final marker
In constructing the Akan relative clause, the particle [no] may play dual function syntactically; thus (1) as a marker of definiteness, and (2) as a clause final marker of subordination in the relative clause. In Akan, for any sentence to be grammatically acceptable, the particle [no] which may be occupied by a noun phrase such as numerals or pronominal should not be omitted from the construction. Dzemeshie [18]

The resumptive pronoun
The relative clause construction in some languages seeks to retain a pronominal within the R / C [51] . This pronominal is known as the resumptive pronoun. It occupies the syntactic position of the referent in the relativization. In Akan, this resumptive pronoun is a phenomenon in the formation of some relative clauses. This RES usually precedes the verb within the R / C. Saah [47] outlined some transitive verbs such as 'kum'----kill, 'hyia'----meet etc. which accommodate the RES in the R / C construction. In Akan, the resumptive pronoun is a necessary grammatical item which is used to relativize the subject in a sentence; occurrence which is cross-linguistically unusual. Since there is no RES, the subject (Head Noun) is not relativized. In sentence 9c above, the absent of the co-referential copy in the relative clause makes it difficult to identify the child who was beaten by Yaw. For easy identification, the RES must be accounted for in the relative clause as in sentence (9a & b).

Similarities of relative clause formation in Akan normal sentences and proverb structure
This section discusses the similarities of the relative clause formation in both Akan normal sentence and that of Akan proverb structure with respect to their relational and the constituent structures.
The first observation is that there is the absence of Head Noun Determiners in both structures. This is evidently manifested in the formation of Overt Antecedent Noun Phrase in both structures below.  What brings about the similarities in the above structures is that, there is presence of null head noun determiners in both structures. In the normal sentences, the presence of the head noun determiners will still render the sentences meaningful only when we want to show definiteness but in the context of generalization, it will always be omitted as seen in examples 10a & b above. The phenomenon is in agreement with the assertion made by [37] that human NPs disfavour the enclitic 'no' in many occasions. What has accounted for the omission of the head noun determiners in examples 11a & b in the proverb structures is that, proverb being a communal property, has a universal truth and as such it does not point to a particular object or thing [56] despite the fact that definite NPs do favour the enclitic 'no'. Should it happen that way, the universality of its truth will be missing entirely.
Another observation is that both structures can form their relative clauses in the objective case of the structures (extra position R / C) as found in examples 12a & b and 13a & b below. The common phenomenon here is that, the R / Cs do not occur in the subjective cases but the syntactic positions of its occurrences are that they occur at the post positions of the objects in the structures under consideration to modify the immediate noun phrase. This intensifies the argument by Fox [21] that the RC can occur 'at the right periphery where it merged'.  [37] , assertion that the RES helps in the relativization of the head noun in the structure.

Slap [REL RES-near you DET] 2PL-receive FOC early.
A slap closer to you is received early. (FT) Moreover, Akan normal sentence and proverb structure show the formation of covert ANP (headless) which happens to be a pronominal. In the sentences below (16a & b), none of the relative clause is nominalized and so in the absence of the Headed Noun there should be a pronominal representation of the head in the relativized position [33] . This pronominal, in Akan, must undergo what I term as 'binary mutation' in order to account for the head noun and the relativizer as seen in examples (17a & b)

Conlusion
The paper sought to find out the similarities and differences in the relative clause formation in Akan normal sentence and proverb structure. At the end of the analysis, the following facts were established. Similarities exit in both structures in terms of the presence of RES. Relative clauses occur at the right periphery of the structures. A Pronominal which undergoes a binary mutation to account for the head and relativizer is also seen in both structures. In terms of the differences, the CFM 'no' shows the definiteness of the preceding noun in the Akan normal clause whiles there is absence of such CFM in the proverb structure. It has been also established that differences exist in the syntactic positions of the RES in both structures. From the above, it is indeed obvious that similarities and dichotomy exist in both structures. The existence of similarities and difference in RC formation in both Akan proverbs and Akan normal sentences has significant implications on the Akan language and its usage. The findings from the study have enlightened the users of the language to appreciate the formation of RCs in proverbial structures and normal sentences in Akan and to help them draw structural correlations between the two structures as indicated in 24a & b, 25a & b, 26a & b etc. Finally, the findings from the study would also help the language users to fully understand the structural sameness and dichotomy of both the Akan proverb structure and Akan normal sentence with regards to RC formation in the two different structures.