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Difference between revisions of "Typological Features Template for Akan"

Line 17: Line 17:
  
 
Examples: Fanti      Asanti      Akuapim      English
 
Examples: Fanti      Asanti      Akuapim      English
           hu~ - hu  hu~ - hu    hu~w - huw  see - blow (air)  
+
           - hu  - hu    hu~w - huw  see - blow (air)  
 
                                                 (Dolphyne 1988:4)
 
                                                 (Dolphyne 1988:4)
 
NB: In most cases the difference between Fanti and Asanti is tone.           
 
NB: In most cases the difference between Fanti and Asanti is tone.           

Revision as of 11:53, 2 March 2010

By Lilian Haugereid

Feature Description
Phonological Features In the following I will describe the phonological inventory of Akan.
Vowel inventory Vowels in Akan are grouped into three parts.

A. Oral Vowels:

B. Nasalised Vowels: Nasalisation is an important phonological feature in Akan. It can for example bring changes in meaning. There are five nasalised vowels and they are marked in transcription by placing (~) above the vowel.

These are the five nasalised vowels: [ ]

Examples: Fanti Asanti Akuapim English

         hũ - hu   hũ - hu    hu~w - huw   see - blow (air) 
                                               (Dolphyne 1988:4)

NB: In most cases the difference between Fanti and Asanti is tone.

NB: Vowels [o, 3, ), o] are only nasalised in the Fanti dailects

C. Long Vowels: Vowels in Akan can either be long or short. The length of the vowel can determine the meaning difference of some words in the language. In orthography, long vowels are represented by doubling them.

Examples:
          Akan   English    Akan     English
          da      sleep     daa      everyday
          sa      dance     saa      exactly      
Vowel harmony In this field you describe rule based assimilations involving vowels in [your language]
Consonant inventory In this field you describe the consonants of [your language]
Tone In this field you indicate if [your language] is a tone language and which tones are used; does [your language] have lexical tone?
Syllable Structure In this field you indicate the basic syllable structures of [your language].
Morpho-syntactic Features In the following fields you describe some of the basic morpho-syntactic parameters of [your language]
morphological classification (1) [Your language] could be an isolating language (not (or nearly not) making use of morphology, agglutinative, such as the Bantu languages of Africa, or synthetic, such as the Saami languages of Scandinavia, or even polysynthetic such as Greenlandic. In this field you classify [your language] according to these parameters if possible.
morphological classification (2) Linguists have distinguished between head- and dependent-marking languages. Semitic languages are head marking languages; it is the head of the noun phrases that needs to have a special form when followed by a dependent noun; in the Germanic languages it is the head of the verb phrase that expresses person-number features of its subject. Grammatical dependencies on the other hand are in some of the Germanic languages expressed on the dependent noun phrases in form of case. [Your language] might be both, head- and dependent-marking, depending on the category of speech and or the type of feature expressed. This is what you can describe in this field.
Nominal Phrases In the following fields follows a description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of nominal constituents
syntactic structure In this field you describe the linear order of elements in the noun phrase
nominal modification In this field you indicate the basic types of nominal modification (adjectives, relative clauses, adpositions...)
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 In this field you describe how possession is expressed (for example, syntactically or by use of prepositions, through juxtaposition or morphologically) Does [your language] feature possessive pronouns?
pronominal system In this field you indicate if [your language] has free pronoun forms? Are pronouns marked for their grammatical function (object versus subject pronouns)? Does your language have bound pronouns (affixes) or pronoun doubling? Are reflexives expressed by pronouns?
Verbal Phrases In the following fields serve for the description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of verbal constituents
word order In this field you indicate the basic word order of your language (SOV, SOV ...)
TAM In this field you indicate which tense and/or aspects are morphologically or tonally marked; does [your language] make use of periphrastic tense or aspect constructions?
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