Typological, Phylogenetic, and Areal Properties of Conative Animal Calls in Ewe

This article is dedicated to conative animal calls (CACs) in Ghanaian Ewe (Kwa). The study is couched within a ‘radial-network-with-prototype-effects’ approach to linguistic categorisation and examines the typological features of CACs (phonetics and morphology) as well as their phylogenetic (cognate) and areal (contact-induced) properties. Drawing on previous works on CACs, fieldwork activities involving seven speakers of Ewe, and the native-speaker competence of one of the authors, a set of 17 primary CACs is identified and complemented with an open class of (poorly lexicalised) secondary CACs. The analysis of the material collected demonstrates that Ewe CACs comply with the formal features associated with the prototype of a CAC and, when treated holistically, the CAC category fulfils its typological profile. The canonicity degree exhibited by Ewe CACs closely matches that reported for another Kwa language, Akan, with some CACs being (nearly) identical in both languages. The authors argue that this lexemic similarity most likely stems from crosslinguistic tendencies and thus instantiates the phenomenon of parallel development instead of having an areal or phylogenetic motivation.