Typological Features Template for Akan

By Lilian Haugereid

Feature	Description
Phonological Features	In the following I will describe the phonological inventory of Akan and the features that its dialects share. Some of these dialects are Asante, Fante and Akuapem as well as Bono. Dialects of Akan are mainly characterized by phonological differences, but other difference can also be described. The account we are providing here is directed towards a description of the grammatical features that all dialects of Akan share.
Vowel Inventory	Vowels in Akan are described here under five headings: oral, nasalised, and long vowels, diphthongs, and vowel harmony (or vowel combinations across syllables). A. Oral Vowels Akan has 9 or 10 oral vowels, depending on the dialect: [e,ɔ,a,o,ɛ i,u,ɪ,æ,ʊ ]. In some dialects [æ] is not used, and is replaced by [a]. In the orthography, the letters e and o represent two contrastive vowels each: e represents both [e] and [ɪ], and o represents both [o] and [ʊ]. For example 1: Akan Ph.Trans English Akan Ph.Trans English te(w) /tɪ(w)/ 'tear' kɛsi /kɛsɪ/ 'big' fie /fie/ 'home' esiw/esie /(esiw)(esie)/ 'anthill' to(w) /tʊw/ 'throw' horo /hʊhʊ/ 'wash' obi /obi/ 'someone' ako /ako/ 'parrot' NB"Ph.Trans" refers to phonetic transcription. As can be seen from example 1 above, the vowel e in orthography represents vowels /ɪ/ and /e/, and the vowel o represents /o/, and/ʊ/. So in any written Akan text, you will find these 7 vowel letters: i e ɛ a ɔ o u, as in the Akan sentence below. Example 2: kofi bɛtɔn “Kofi will sell (something).” kòfí kofi Kofi Np bɛ´tɔ´ń bɛ́ tɔn FUT sell Vtr The two different sets of Akan vowels based on ATR is discussed under "Vowel Harmony" below. NB: It can also be mentioned here that the vowels carry tone(s); (as examplified above), which will be discussed later under "Tone" 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 (~), which is normally called the tilde, above the vowel. These are the five nasalised vowels: ἶ, ĩ, ã, ẽ, ῦ, and ũ Example 3: Fante Asante Akuapem English hũ - hu hũ - hu hũw - huw see - blow (air) (Dolphyne 1988:4) As a result of assimilation, a neighbouring nasal sound can give its nasalitiy quality to a vowel; as in this word: nkwa: /ŋ̃kʷã/ - 'life' NB: Vowels [o, ɛ, ɔ, o] are only nasalised in the Fante dialects 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 4: Akan English Akan English da sleep daa everyday sa dance saa exactly kɔ go kɔɔ red D. Diphthongs As indicated above, the occurrence of identical vowels in an Akan word is considered as long vowels. There are also occurrence of sequences of nonidentical vowels. These are produced when the tongue glides from one articulation to another. Example 5: Yaa dae “Yaa slept” Yaa yaa YaaSBJ Np dae da e sleep PAST Vitr As can be seen in example 5, the verb 'dae' has the vowels [a] and and [ɪ] articulated by the tongue gliding from the central part of the mouth to the middle front part. E. Disyllabic Vowel Combinations
Vowel harmony	The harmony of vowels is defined as the restriction on the occurence of certain vowels in the same word. In the production of Akan vowels, the position of the tongue determines whether a vowel has the feature "advanced tongue root" or "retracted tongue root", +ATR and -ATR respectively. The + Advanced Tongue root vowels are produced by pushing the root of the tongue forward. For the production of the unadvanced tongue root vowels. The root of the tongue is retracted or pushed backward. Set A(+ATR) [i, e, æ, o, u] Set B(-ATR) [ɪ, ɛ, a, ɔ, ʊ] This feature places restrictions on the occurrence of vowels from set A and set B. Most Akan words have vowels from either set A or B. Example 6: +ATR English -ATR English /koko/ 'chest' /kɔkɔ(w)/ 'red' /Kun(u)/ 'husband' /kʊn/ 'neck' /efie/ 'home' /ɛfɪɛ/ 'vomit' */adi/ 'has eaten' /ædɪ/ 'thing' So the vowels can be paired as below; those on the left +ATR and on the right -ATR. The front vowels are produced with the front, the central, the center of the tongue and the back, the back part of the tongue. Front Central Back i/ɪ æ/a o/ɔ e/ɛ ʊ/u Harmony Exceptions: The asterisk (*) placed on the last example under 'Example 6' is because of the occurrence of vowel /a/. In dialects that do not have /æ/, /a/ can occur in words with both Advanced or Unadvanced vowels. The table below shows an overview of the vowels in the language. Orthography Phonetic Symbols Set A Set B i i i e ɪ ɪ ɛ e e ɛ ɛ a æ æ a a ɔ ɔ ɔ o o o u ʊ ʊ u u In summary, these are the vowels and their names in Akan: i Advanced High Front vowel ɪ Unadvanced High Front vowel e Advanced Mid Front vowel ɛ Unadvanced Mid Front vowel æ Advanced Low Central vowel a Undvanced Low Central vowel o Adavnced Mid Back vowel ɔ Unadvanced Mid Back vowel u Advanced High Back vowel ʊ Unadvanced High Back vowel
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