Vol. 4, Issue 11, Part A (2018)

Abstract
The domain of cut and break events have received a wide range of international literary attention. Evident in the field include, Pye (1994), Bohnemayer (2005), Gaby (2007) etc. Within the Ewe language, Ameka and Essegbey (2007) classified the cut and break events into highly agentive, agentive, highly non- agentive and non- agentive. I assume that because of the broad cut and break domain (C&B)in the Ewe language, much attention has not been drawn onto the cut domain specifically hence not many cut events in the language have been worked on. This paper focuses on the semantic properties of cut verbs in Ewe. In Ewe, Å‹lÉ” ‘to weed’ is the cover term expressed with dialectical variations as Å‹lÉ”, yà, ƒo as would be demonstrated in the discussion. Essegbey and Ameka (2007) divides the Ghana Ewe dialects into Southern (A`l4 and T4`u) and Inland (Ho, Anfoe, Kpando and Kpedze). I demonstrate that at least Adaklu an inland dialect expresses “weeding” as yaÌ€’ while the Tongu express it variously as ‘ƒoÌ€, Å‹lÉ”’ glossed ‘cut’ but for the sake of this paper I gloss it ‘to weed’ for convenience. The paper suggests in conclusion that the lexicalization process depends largely on the semantics of the verb, the theme concerned and the instrument use in the cut event. That is to say in Ewe, the verb lexicalizes only the theme and the theme consequently lexicalizes the instrument.