Likpe

This paper explores the ways in which participants involved in the realisation of events as labelled by verbs and licensed by constructions are expressed in Likpe (Sεkpεlé lip), a Na-Togo, Kwa (Niger-Congo) language spoken in Ghana. A semantically based view of grammar is adopted. It is shown that the strategies deployed in the language are significant for theoretical and cross-linguistic understandings of the coding of participants in several respects: Participants with locative function are systematically linked to core, oblique and peripheral roles. There is linking underspecification with some experiential and spatial predicates such that their participants can be linked to either core grammatical relation with attendant semantic consequences. A complexification in this domain of Likpe is the combination of serial verb constructions, adpositions and verb derivational processes for fulfilling some of the participant coding functions.