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.