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Typological Features Template for Akan

By Lilian Haugereid

Feature Description
Phonological Features In the following we 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 characterised by phonological differences, but other difference can also be described.
Vowel Inventory Vowels are described under five headings: oral, nasalised, and long vowels, diphthongs, and vowel harmony (or vowel combinations across syllables).


Oral Vowels

Akan has 9 or 10 oral vowels, depending on the dialect: [e,ɔ,a,o,ɛ i,u,ɪ,æ,ʊ ]. Vowel [æ] is only used in Asante and Akuapem. So you can see from the example below that, where Akuapem and Asante use [æ] Fante uses [e]

Asante/Akuapem Ph.Trans Asante/Akuapem Fante PH.Trans Fante English
ani /æni/ enyiwa /enyiwa/ 'eyes'

In the orthography, the letters e and o represent contrastive vowels: e represents [e] and [ɪ], and o represents [o] and [ʊ] as illustrated in the table below.

Akan Ph.Trans English Akan Ph.Trans English
te(w) /tɪ(w)/ 'to tear' kɛsi /kɛsɪ/ 'big'
fie /fie/ 'home' esiw/esie /(esiw)(esie)/ 'ant hill'
to(w) /tʊw/ 'to throw' horo /hʊhʊ/ 'to wash'
obi /obi/ 'someone' ako /ako/ 'parrot'

NB"Ph.Trans" refers to phonetic transcription.

Esi bɛkɔ owura no hɔ
“Esi will go to the gentleman”
Ési´
Esi
esiSBJ
N
bɛ́kɔ́
bɛ́kɔ́
FUTgo
V
oˋwuˋraˋ
owura
gentlemanOBJ
N
noˋ
no
DEF
DET
hɔ´
thereDXSDIST
PN


In the example above we observe the occurrence of all 7 vowel letters used in Akan. Vowels carry tone(s). This is discussed later under "Tone".

B. Nasalised Vowels

Nasalisation in Akan can be contrastive (see table below), and as the result of assimilation nasality can spread to following vowels (nkwa: /ŋ̃kʷã/ - 'life'). There are five nasalised vowels in Akan: ἶ, ĩ, ã, ῦ, and ũ

Fante Asante Akuapem English
hũ - hu hũ - hu hũw - huw see - blow (air)

(Dolphyne 1988:4)

NB: Vowels [e, ɛ, ɔ, o] are not normally nasalised in Akan, however [ɛ], and [ɔ] can be nasalised in the Fante dialects when they occur as neighbours with nasal consonants, [m] and [n] in a word or a phrase.


C. Long Vowels

The length of the vowel may determine meaning. Orthographically,long vowels are represented through doubling.

Akan English Akan English
da sleep daa everyday
sa dance saa exactly
* kɔ go kɔɔ red

Verbs in Akan are inflected for tense/aspect by lengthening the final vowel. Oral vowels and nasalised vowels except the unadvanced high front vowel [ɪ] can be lengthened (see table below). The asterisks indicates the vowels that can be nasalised.

Vowels Oral vowel English Long vowel English Nasal English Long Nasal English
* i ti head/chase tii chased tἷ scratch tἷἷ scratched
* ɪ go out fɪɪ cameout ribs
e hwe to suck hwee zero
ɛ resempble sɛɛ resembled
* u pu spit puu spat reject/smoke pũũ rejected/smoked
* ʊ throw tʊʊ threw tῦ bake/roast tῦῦ roasted/baked
* a ka bite kaa bit drive/say kãã drove/said
æ æni eyes dææbi no
o som worship apoo cheating
ɔ go kɔɔ went

D. Diphthongs

An example of a diphthong is given below:

Yaa dae
“Yaa slept”
Yaa
yaa
YaaSBJ
Np
dae
dae
sleepPAST
Vitr


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 8:
+ATR English -ATR English
/koko/ 'chest' /kɔkɔ(w)/ 'red'
/Kun(u)/ 'husband' /kʊn/ 'neck'
/efie/ 'home' /afɪ/ 'year'
/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: There are few words in Akan that deviates from the harmony rule. The unadvanced vowel /a/ is known to usually occur in such words. However /ɛ/ too does deviate sometime. The following are examples of such deviations.

Akan English
sika 'money'
kura 'to hold'
dua 'to plant'
nyinsɛn 'to be pregnant'
pinkyɛn 'come close'
ohia 's/he needs'

We can see from the above examples that vowels /a/ occurred with the advanced vowels /i, u, o/ and /ɛ/ which is also -ATR, occurred with +ATR vowel /i/.


The table below shows an overview of the vowels in the language.

Orthography Phonetic Symbols +ATR -ATR
i i i
e ɪ/e e ɪ
ɛ ɛ ɛ
a æ/a æ a
ɔ ɔ ɔ
o o/ʊ o ʊ
u u u

In summary, these are the vowels and their names in Akan:

           i       Advanced High Front 
           ɪ       Unadvanced High Front
           e       Advanced Mid Front 
           ɛ       Unadvanced Mid Front 
           æ       Advanced Low Central 
           a       Undvanced Low Central
           o       Adavnced Mid Back 
           ɔ       Unadvanced Mid Back 
           u       Advanced High Back 
           ʊ       Unadvanced High Back
Consonant inventory

Akan has 16 consonants: [j, w, p, b, f, d, t, s, m, n, k, kʷ, h, hʷ, g, gʷ]. The table below gives the articulation of these consonants:

Bilabial Labiodentals Alveolar Pre-palatal Palatal Velar Glottal
Stop p,b t,d k/kʷ,g/gʷ ʔ
Fricative f s ç(hy) h
Labialized

Fricatives (-Voice)

çʷ(hw)
Affricate ʥ(gy)/ʨ(ky)
Labialized affricate ʨʷ,ʥʷ
Lateral(voiced) l
Nasal(voiced) m n ɲ(ny) ŋ(n)
Labialized

Nasal (voiced)

ɲʷ(nw) ŋʷ(nw)
Glide (voiced) r y w

Examples: 9 Bilabial consonants

 Example n:
           Akan   English   Akan    English    Akan    English
           /papa/  'father'  /ɔbaa/  'girl'     /maame/  'mother'
 [f] is the only Labio-dental consonant in Akan.
 Example: 10
           Akan   English  
           /fɛrɪ/   'shy'
  

Alveolar consonants:

 Example: 11
           Akan   English   Akan    English    Akan    English
          /atadeɛ/ 'clothe' /sɪrɪ/  'laughs' /ɛnora/  'yesterday'
 
 [hy, hw, ky, gy]


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].

Typological Features Template for Akan - morpho-syntax