| Feature
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Description
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| Phonological Features
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| Vowel inventory
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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.
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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 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.
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| morphological classification (2)
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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.
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| Nominal Phrases
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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 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.
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 |
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.
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In a Noun Phrase the first structural position is occupied by the Noun and the last by the Definite. The Noun Phrase has the same structure, mutatis mutandis as the sentence in Attie. They have each a pronominal agreement which shares the same features with the Nominal subject.
e.g.
3 (i) nsafu-ɔn o boka mpɛtɛ-ɔ
Soldier-Def/3SG/help+Past/orphan-Def
The soldier helped the orphan.
(ii) nsafu-ɔn o mpɛtɛ boka-a
Soldier-Def/3SG.Poss/orphan/help-Def
The fact that the soldier helped the orphan
| nominal modification
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In this field you indicate the basic types of nominal modification (adjectives, relative clauses, adpositions...)
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| nominal specification
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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?
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| possession
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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?
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| pronominal system
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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?
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| Verbal Phrases
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In the following fields serve for the description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of verbal constituents
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| word order
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In this field you indicate the basic word order of your language (SOV, SOV ...)
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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 of [your language]
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