Difference between revisions of "Typological Features Template for Ga"
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|morphological classification (1) | |morphological classification (1) | ||
| − | |Ga is moderately agglutinating in respect of verbs | + | |Ga is moderately agglutinating in respect of verbs. Simple (noun compound) singular nouns however are monomorphemic. |
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|morphological classification (2) | |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, | + | |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. |
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|'''Nominal Phrases''' | |'''Nominal Phrases''' | ||
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|nominal modification | |nominal modification | ||
| − | |The head of a nominal phrase may be modified by adjectives, numbers and the other elements specified above, and by relative clauses. | + | |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. |
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|nominal specification | |nominal specification | ||
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|pronominal system | |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. |
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|'''Verbal Phrases''' | |'''Verbal Phrases''' | ||
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|word order | |word order | ||
| − | | | + | |Ga is a strictly SVO language. |
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|TAM | |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 Hight tone-initial verb - which means that often it is not expressed. |
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|infinitival forms | |infinitival forms | ||
Revision as of 12:30, 18 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 | In this field you describe the consonants of [your language] |
| 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 (noun 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 Hight tone-initial verb - which means that often it is not expressed. |
| infinitival forms | In this field you indicate if [your language] makes use of an infinitive marker? How many infinitival forms does your language have? |
| verbal constructions | In this field you indicate if [your language] has ditransitive constructions, serial verb constructions or complex verb forms composed of several verbs. Does your language have so called light verbs, perhaps only used to indicate a certain tense or aspect? |
| Adpositions | In this field you indicate if [your language[ makes use of prepositions or postpositions. Does your language have spatial nouns? Does your language use adpositions or particles to indicate grammatical relations between the verb and a nominal argument? |
| Complementation | In this field you describe complementation strategies. Does [your language] make use of complementizers? |
| 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 |