Typecraft v2.5
Jump to: navigation, search

Typological Features Template for Dangme

Revision as of 08:39, 19 November 2009 by Regina Caesar (Talk | contribs)

BY REGINA OFORIWAH CAESAR


Feature Description
Phonological Features In the following fields I describe the phonological inventory of the Dangme.
Vowel inventory In this field I describe the vowels of Dangme. See below:
 Dangme has seven vowels. These are /i, e,ε, a,כ,o,u/.  
Vowel harmony In this field I describe rule based assimilations involving vowels in Dangme. Vowel harmony
 occurs mildly in Dangme. It is mostly realised in the formation of some negatives in Dangme.
 Vowel harmony occurs in Verb stems that take the suffix [-i]in their negative formation.For 
 instance, verb stems that end in /u/ select the high front rounded vowel as their negative 
 marker. By so doing, the front and back vowel /i,u/ agree in height. See below:
     Verb Stem                                Negative Suffix [-i]
    tu 'jump'                                    tui 'did not jump'
    pu ' burry'                                  pui 'did not burry'
    ku 'break'                                   kui 'did not break'
 Also, verbs stems which end in the vowel /o/, raises the /o/ from mid-high to high position in 
 their negative formations before the negative marker /i/ is attached. For example:
      Verb Stem            Rise in vowel height   Negative Suffix [-i]
                             /o/ = /u/
     ko 'pound'              ko  = ku                     kui 'did not pound'
     lo 'weave'              lo  = lu                     lui 'did not weave'
     po 'cut'                po  = pu                     pui 'did not cut'
    
Consonant inventory In this field I describe the consonants of Dangme.
 Dangme has a total of twenty three consonants. These are: d, d, f, g, gb, h, j, k, kp, l, 
 m, n, ng, ny, ngm, p, s, t, v, w, y, z. Each of these consonants can occur at word initial, and 
 at word medial positions. But 'm' can also occur at word final position. Words formed with 
 consonant 'm' at the final position function as adverbs.See below: 
        pampam, tamtam, kamkam, tomtom.     
Tone In this field I describe the tone pattern in Dangme. Dangme is a tone language.It has three tone
levels: high tone (́), mid tone (̀), and low tone (ˉ). These tones function lexically and 
grammatically to distinguish meaning among words and phrases in the Dangme language.
Syllable Structure In this field you indicate the basic syllable structures of [your language].
Morpho-syntactic Features In the following fields I describe some of the basic morpho-syntactic parameters of Dangme.
morphological classification (1) [Your language] could be an isolating language (not (or nearly not) making use of morphology, agglutinative, such as the Bantu languages of Africa, or synthetic, such as the Saami languages of Scandinavia, or even polysynthetic such as Greenlandic. In this field you classify [your language] according to these parameters if possible.
morphological classification (2) Linguists have distinguished between head- and dependent-marking languages. Semitic languages are head marking languages; it is the head of the noun phrases that needs to have a special form when followed by a dependent noun; in the Germanic languages it is the head of the verb phrase that expresses person-number features of its subject. Grammatical dependencies on the other hand are in some of the Germanic languages expressed on the dependent noun phrases in form of case. [Your language] might be both, head- and dependent-marking, depending on the category of speech and or the type of feature expressed. This is what you can describe in this field.
Nominal Phrases In the following fields follows a description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of nominal constituents
syntactic structure In this field you describe the linear order of elements in the noun phrase
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