Typological Features Template for Attie
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by Joseph Bogny
| Feature | Description |
| Phonological Features | In the following fields you describe the phonological inventory of [your language] |
| Vowel inventory | Attie 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. |
| Vowel harmony | 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 )] |
| Consonant inventory | p, t, c, k, kp, h, b, d,l, ɟ, gb, s,v, ʃ, j, w , ts, tʃ, dz, dʒ |
| Tone | 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. |
| Syllable Structure | The basic syllable structure of Akye is CV. |
| Morpho-syntactic Features | In the following fields you describe some of the basic morpho-syntactic parameters of [your language] |
| morphological classification (1) | Attie is an agglutinative language where we can easily separate morphemes; there are prefix and suffix. The usual prefix is a (e.g. yɛla "love" > a-yɛla "beloved"; 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. |
| morphological classification (2) | Attie is an SVO language; but in the inaccomplish Aspect the object preceed the Verb; in this case the VP has the same pattern as the lexical structure of the Verb. |
| Nominal Phrases | |
| syntactic structure | In Attie the Definite is the last constituent of the Nominal Phrase. The Noun is the first consituent. Adjectives preceed the Noun; Adjectivs of colour preceed Adjectives of quality or quantity; Numerals follow Adjectives. The genetival morpheme preceeds the Noun its determines. When the Nominal Phrase has no overt definite it cannot have a corresponding pronominal agreement.
e.g. [abijan ʃukusɔn] dze ʃuku Abidjan/students/go+Past/school “(The) Sudents of Abidjan went to school” (ii)*[abijan ʃukusɔn] ba dze ʃuku
Abidjan/students/3PL/go/school.
2 (i) [abijan ʃukusɔn ba] ba dze ʃuku Abidjan/students/Def/3PL/go+Past/school.
“The students of Abidjan went to school”
(ii) *[abijan ʃukusɔn ba] dze ʃuku In (1.ii) the structure is rejected because there is no Definite within the Nominal Phrase and yet it possess a corresponding pronominal agreement. In 2(ii), the structure is rejected because since the Nominal Phrase has a Def within it is not followed by a corresponding pronominal agreement. |
| 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 |