Difference between revisions of "Typological Features Template for Ga"

Revision as of 09:08, 19 November 2009

Feature	Description
Phonological Features
Vowel inventory	Ga has seven oral vowels: a i e ɛ u o ɔ and five nasal vowels: ã ĩ ũ ɔ̃ ɛ̃. Double or consecutive copy vowels arise morphophonologically, but otherwise there are no long vowels.
Vowel harmony	Ga does not have ATR harmony. There are assimilation rules for sequences of two vowels. Sequences of three vowels occur in the orthography but are always reduced in speech to two.
Consonant inventory	Ga Consonant Sounds: Stops p, t, k, kw, kp; b, d, g, gw, gb; Affricates ʧ, ʧw; ʤ, ʤw; Fricatives f, s, ʃ, ʃw; v, z: Nasal continuants m (ɱ), n, ɲ, ŋ, (ŋw), ŋm; Approximant l, Lateral (r). Sounds in () occur allophonically.
Tone	Ga has two tones and downstep. There are numerous lexical minimal pairs, in nouns and especially in verbs. There are also a few cases of high-low falling tone, usually on word-final syllables. They alternate with simple high tone in non-final contexts.
Syllable Structure	Syllable types are CV, V and N, each bearing a tone. Every lexical stem contains at least one CV syllable. Many grammatical formatives are V or N syllables.
Morpho-syntactic Features
morphological classification (1)	Ga is moderately agglutinating in respect of verbs. Simple (non-compound) singular nouns however are monomorphemic.
morphological classification (2)	Ga is generally head-marking at sentence and phrase levels, but case is not grammatically marked and there is no gender or nominal class. On the other hand, Adjectives and the Indefinite Specifier show number agreement with the head noun.
Nominal Phrases	In the following fields follows a description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of nominal constituents
syntactic structure	The linear ordering in the Noun phrase is as follows: Determiner-Possessor-Modifier Noun-Head Noun-Adjective-Numeral-Indefinite Specifier-Deictic specifier-Definite marker-Quantifier-Intensifier. A minimal NP consists of a noun or pronoun.
nominal modification	The head of a nominal phrase may be modified by a possessive phrase, by adjectives, numbers and the other elements specified above, and by relative clauses.
nominal specification	In this field you indicate the basic types of specification. Does [your language] have determiners, demonstratives (deixis), numerals, quantifiers. Are there affixes expressing reference, deixis. Are there nouns or other elements expression a portion of a noun that the co-occur with?
possession	Possession is expressed by simple juxtaposition Possessor-Possessum, except that if the Possessor is plural, the Possessum takes a prefix a-.
pronominal system	The independent (Absolute) pronoun form occurs as object and at the beginning of a sentence if focused or topicalized. Subject and possessive pronouns are prefixed to the verb or noun respectively.
Verbal Phrases	In the following fields serve for the description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of verbal constituents
word order	Ga is a strictly SVO language.
TAM	Aspect, mood, deixis and polarity are marked on the verb by a combination of prefixes and suffixes. Most aspect and mood prefixes are expressed segmentally after an NP subject but by tone on the preceding syllable when the subject is a pronoun prefix. The Aorist is expressed by downstep between a High tone-final subject and a High tone-initial verb - which means that often it is not expressed and the verb appears in its basic form.
infinitival forms	Ga has no true infinitives. However a nominalized form occurs frequently as the complement of certain classes of verb.
verbal constructions	Most verbs in Ga may occur intransitively or transitively. Some also occur ditransitively. Serial verb constructions are common, usually limited to two verb phrases. Light verbs occur mainly in sentences expressing properties, and a few (different verbs) typically occur with unified objects.
Adpositions	Postpositions in Ga may head both subjects and objects of sentences. Formally they are identical to possessive phrases. There are very few true prepositions, but a number of verbs may head 'verbid' phrases that are more or less comparable to prepositional phrases. Prepositional or verbid phrases are invariably adjunctival. Postpositional phrases are rarely or never adjuncts.
Complementation	Complement clauses follow the verb. Depending on the verb, a complementizer may be optional or required.
Special Properties of [your language]	In this field you should mention properties of [your language] which did not fit into any of the other categories mentioned in this template

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 |Consonant inventory
-| In this field you describe the consonants of [your language]
+|  Ga Consonant Sounds: Stops p, t, k, kw, kp; b, d, g, gw, gb; Affricates ʧ, ʧw; ʤ, ʤw; Fricatives f, s, ʃ, ʃw; v, z: Nasal continuants m (ɱ), n, ɲ, ŋ, (ŋw), ŋm; Approximant l, Lateral (r).  Sounds in () occur allophonically.
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 |Tone