Attie (ISO 639-3: ati) is one of the languages of the Côte d’Ivoire.
| Feature
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Description
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| Phonological Features
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| Vowel inventory
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Attie, the name used by Ethnologue for what its speakers call Akye has been described as a system of nine oral vowels: a e i o u ɛ ɔ ʌ ɤ and five nasal ones:an,in, ɛn, ɔn, ʌn. According to my recent works, the last two oral vowels are phonetic realization of respectively ɛ and e. In the verb system when e or ɛ is suffixed to u it becomes ɤ or ʌ.In fact the morphophonemic of this two vowels demonstrates they are not phonemic. Examples: ku-e > ku-ɤ (to be old+Past); ku-ɛ > ku-ʌ (to be old+Imperfect); the second occurrence is the one which speakers used, but instead of using this form some of them use respectively ku-o and ku-ɔ(making aperture assimilation); even in the discourse, speakers use ɔ instead of ʌ in some terms; for example lʌ (down) is pronounced lɔ.Since I consider the nasal feature as a syllable feature I assume there is no nasal vowel in this language. In definitive the vowel system of Attie is: i e ɛ a u o ɔ. It is the same system as the Baoule language.
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| Vowel harmony
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Akye is not an ATR language. But we find [RO] (Round) and aperture harmony. Examples: ʃi-ɔ > ʃi-u > ʃu-u (ɔ took the aperture of i and changed into u in the middle realization; in the last realization, the Round feature of i is assimilated by the one of u so that i became round )]
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| Consonant inventory
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p, t, c, k, kp, h, b, d,l, ɟ, gb, s,v, ʃ, j, w , ts, tʃ, dz, dʒ
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| Tone
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Attie has three tones: H, M, L. We find and extra high tone as in Aŋlo but it is the merging of H tone associated with an immediate L or M tone. The three tones are lexical.
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| Syllable Structure
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The basic syllable structure of Akye is CV.
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| Morpho-syntactic Features
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| morphological classification (1)
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Attie is an agglutinative language where we can easily separate morphemes; there are prefix and suffix. The usuals prefix are a, o and e: a stands for Agent, o stands for Theme related to an animate referent and e stands for Theme related to an inanimate referent. Consider (1); (1a) shows the basic verb, while (1b) illustrates the deverbal nominal.
(1a)
(1b)
the usual suffix is a, e, or ɛ (for the derivation of verbs: e.g: bu "break" > bu-a "give the verdict"; bu "break"> bu-e "broken". Prefix are found with nouns and suffix with verbs. Sometimes they are so merged that we cannot distinguish them. Most of the words in Attie are monosyllabic. They decline a variation from singular to plural.
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| morphological classification (2)
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Only verbs with high vowel accept TAM markers. The other do not since non high vowels do not have glide in Attie. The suffix ɛ is the Imperfective Marker and the suffix e the Perfective Marker.
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| Nominal Phrases
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| Adjective(color), Adjective(quantity/quality)
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Noun
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......
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......
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Determiner
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ba
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| syntactic structure
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In Attie the Definite is the last constituent of the Nominal Phrase. The Noun is the first constituent. Adjectives precede the Noun; Adjectives of color precede Adjectives of quality or quantity; Numerals follow Adjectives. The genetival morpheme precedes the Noun its determines. When the Nominal Phrase has no overt definite it cannot have a corresponding pronominal agreement.
abijan ʃukusɔn dze ʃuku
“Students of Abidjan went to school”
| ʃukusɔn | | ʃuku | sɔn |
| school | AGT |
| N |
*abijan ʃukusɔn ba dze ʃuku
“Students of Abidjan went to school.”
| ʃukusɔn | | ʃuku | sɔn |
| school | AGT |
| N |
abijan ʃukusɔn ba ba dze ʃuku
“The Abijan students go to school”
| ʃukusɔn | | ʃuku | sɔn |
| school | AGT |
| N |
*abijan ʃukusɔn ba dze ʃuku
| ʃukusɔn | | ʃuku | sɔn |
| school | AGT |
| N |
nsafu-ɔn o boka mpɛtɛ-ɔ
“The soldier helped the orphan”
| ǹsáfùɔ̄ɔ̀n | | nsafu | ɔn |
| soldier | DEF |
| N |
nsafu-ɔn o mpɛtɛ boka-a
“The soldier's helping of the orphan”
| ǹsáfùɔ̄ɔ̀n | | ǹsáfùn | ɔ̄ | ɔ̀n |
| soldier | FOC | DEF |
| N |
| mɛ̀pɛ́tɛ̀ | | mɛ̀pɛ́tɛ̀ |
| orphan |
| N |
| bókàāà | | bókà | ā | à |
| help | | DEF |
| N |
The second structure is rejected because there is no Definite within the Nominal Phrase and yet it possess a corresponding pronominal agreement. The fourth structure is rejected because since the Nominal Phrase has a Def within it is not followed by a corresponding pronominal agreement. The last structure is the nominal corresponding of the previous which is a sentence.
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| nominal modification
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Nouns change from singular to plural. Most of the words in this language are monosyllabic. The vowel changes from singular to plural. The morpheme of the plural is ɔ. (e.g. Tsabi "human being" > tsabi-ɔ "human beings"). Some of them change their form: e.g. Bi "child" > vin "children"
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| nominal specification
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| possession
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| pronominal system
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| Verbal Phrases
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| word order
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Attie is an SVO language; but in the inaccomplish Aspect the object precede the Verb; in this case the VP has the same pattern as the lexical structure of the Verb.
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| TAM
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| infinitival forms
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| verbal constructions
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| Adpositions
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| Complementation
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| Special Properties
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