Akan Complements On The Implicational Complementation Hierarchy

The implicational complementation hierarchy (ICH) formulated by Wurmbrand & Lohninger (2020) distinguishes three complement types: Proposition, Situation and Event, which are ordered by independence, transparency, integration and complexity. The ICH outlines the correlation between the semantic functions of the complement types, and the syntactic operations that run directionally along it. The complements are in a coherent containment relation and have minimal requirements for the domain they project: a theta domain for Events, a TMA domain for Situations, and an operator domain for Propositions. If one type of complement can be finite, all complements to its left on the ICH can be too (finiteness universal, Wurmbrand et al. 2020). This chapter discusses the distribution of complements in Akan, a Kwa language spoken in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin, which have traditionally been analysed as finite and requiring a mandatory complementiser. However, new data indicates that the clause introducer sɛ in Twi (dɛ in Fante) can be dropped and non-finite complements are possible in Event structures. I thus argue that Proposition, Situation and Event complements in Akan display the same properties predicted by the ICH and finiteness universal and that finiteness in the language can occur in every domain.