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Typological Features Template for Attie

by Joseph Bogny

Attie (ISO 639-3: ati) is one of the languages of the Côte d’Ivoire.

Feature Description
Phonological Features
Vowel inventory Attie, the name used by Ethnologue for what its speakers call Akye has 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 realisations of respectively ɛ and e. In the verb system when e or ɛ is suffixed to u it becomes ɤ or ʌ. Although phonemic in the following example where: ku-e > ku-ɤ (to be old+Past); ku-ɛ > ku-ʌ (to be old+Imperfect), they are not phonemic from a strictly phonological point of view. For example instead of using <<ku-e > ku-ɤ speakers use ku-o and ku-ɔ(aperture assimilation), and so ɔ instead of ʌ which means the + round feature of 'u' which replaces the -round of ʌ.

Since I consider the nasal feature as a syllable feature I assume there are no nasal vowels in Akye. In conclusion the vowel system of Attie is: i e ɛ a u o ɔ. It is the same system as we find in Baule.

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 Akye is an agglutinative language with both prefixes and suffixes.
derivational morphology (1) The usual prefixes for noun derivation from verbs are a, o and e. The a stands for Agent, o stands for Theme related to an animate referent and e stands for Theme related to an inanimate referent. Notice that in (1a) the locative marker precedes the verb while in the deverbal form in (1b) it it a suffix that follows the verbal stem. The reason for this is the the nominal form is derived from the perfective form of the verb. (1a)
mɛ̀ mɛ̄ vı̋n lá yɛ̀
“I love my children”
mɛ̀
mɛ̀
1SGIPFV
PN
mɛ̄
mɛ̄
1SGPOSS
PN
vı̋n
vı̋n
children
N
lá
lá
insideLOC
N
yɛ̀
yɛ̀
love
V
(1b)
mɛ̄ àyɛ̀lá ā bʌ̀.
“My beloved comes”
mɛ̄
mɛ̄
1SGPOSS
 
àyɛ̀lá
yɛ̀lá
PFVloveinsideLOC
V
IPFV
 
bʌ̀
bʌ̀
come
V



inflectional morphology Verbs, as most words in Akye, are monosyllabic. Tense, Aspect Mood marking follows two distinct paradigms dependent on the vowel quality of the verb's stem vowel:

Below we show the inflection for the verbs break and eat. The verb eat can only occur transitive unless it is negated.

baseform imperfective perfective irrealis
"break" búɔ bùò
(kà) shì "eat" (kà) shɛ̀ shè (kà) shì (kà)


Nominal Phrases The following template illustrates the word order within the noun phrase. Noun phrases in Akye are head-initial and the specifier follows the modifiers. The final element of the phrase is the relative clause. Determiners, demonstratives and quantifiers stand in complementary distribution.


Noun Adjective * Numeral {DEM DET QUANT} Relative Clause
dzākwɛ́ bı́ gbāgbā mı̄ yı̋ kēé mɛ̀ tùn
tree green, nice alone this that I planted
dzākwɛ́ *gbāgbā bı́ mı̄ yı̋ kēé mɛ̀ tùn


Let me also note that adjectives of colour need to precede adjectives of quality or quantity, as shown above.

Akye nouns express 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"

Akye features pronoun doubling, that is, a definite noun phrase needs to co-occur with a pronominal with which it agrees. This is illustrated in the following.

(2a)
abijan ʃukusɔn ba ba dze ʃuku
“The Abijan students go to school”
abijan
abijan
 
Np
ʃukusɔn
ʃukusɔn
schoolAGT
N
ba
ba
DEF
PN
ba
ba
they3PL
PN
dze
dze
go
V
ʃuku
ʃuku
school
N
(2b)
*abijan ʃukusɔn ba dze ʃuku
“Students of Abidjan went to school.”
*abijan
*abijan
 
N
ʃukusɔn
ʃukusɔn
schoolAGT
N
ba
ba
They3PL
PN
dze
dze
goVstem
V
ʃuku
ʃuku
school
N
(2c)
*abijan ʃukusɔn ba dze ʃuku
*abijan
*abijan
 
N
ʃukusɔn
ʃukusɔn
schoolAGT
N
ba
ba
DEF
PN
dze
dze
go
V
ʃuku
ʃuku
school
N


The following sentences illustrate that a possessive nominalized verb such as his helping of orphans (3b) requires the occurrence of a noun phrase final definiteness marker.

nsafu-ɔn o boka mpɛtɛ-ɔ
“The soldier helped the orphan”
ǹsáfùɔ̄ɔ̀n
nsafuɔn
soldierDEF
N
o
3SG
PN
bōkà
boka
helped
V
mpɛtɛɔ
mpɛtɛɔ
orphanDEF
N
nsafu-ɔn o mpɛtɛ boka-a
“The soldier's helping of the orphan”
ǹsáfùɔ̄ɔ̀n
ǹsáfùnɔ̄ɔ̀n
soldierFOCDEF
N
his3SGPOSS
PN
mɛ̀pɛ́tɛ̀
mɛ̀pɛ́tɛ̀
orphan
N
bókàāà
bókà
help DEF
N


pronominal system
Verbal Phrases
word order Attie is an SVO language; but in the emphatic imperfective aspect the object precede the verb. This is illustrated below in (4). In this case the VP has the same structure as the verb in its citation form. The verb eat for example in its citation form is (kà) shì which means thing eat".

(4)

TAM See under Infectional Morphology
infinitival forms
Special properties Akye has serial verb constructions
Bibliography