Typological Features Template for Ga
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Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu and Yvonne Ollennu
| Feature | Description |
| Phonological Features | |
| Vowel inventory | Ga has seven oral vowels: a i e ɛ u o ɔ and five nasal vowels: ã ĩ ũ ɔ̃ ɛ̃. Double or consecutive copy vowels arise morphophonologically, but otherwise there are no long vowels. |
| Vowel harmony | Ga does not have ATR harmony. There are assimilation rules for sequences of two vowels.
Sequences of three vowels occur in the orthography but are always reduced in speech to two. |
| Consonant inventory | Ga Consonant Sounds: Stops p, t, k, kw, kp; b, d, g, gw, gb; Affricates ʧ, ʧw; ʤ, ʤw; Fricatives f, s, ʃ, ʃw; v, z: Nasal continuants m (ɱ), n, ɲ, ŋ, (ŋw), ŋm; Approximant l, Lateral (r). Sounds in () occur allophonically. |
| Tone | Ga has two tones and downstep. There are numerous lexical minimal pairs, in nouns and especially in verbs. There are also a few cases of high-low falling tone, usually on word-final syllables. They alternate with simple high tone in non-final contexts. |
| Syllable Structure | Basic syllable types are CV, V and N, each bearing a tone. There are also syllables of shape CL, where L is the liquid or the retroflex, and bears tone. Every lexical stem contains at least one CV syllable or a sequence CL+V. Many grammatical formatives are V or N syllables. |
| Morpho-syntactic Features | |
| morphological classification (1) | Ga is moderately agglutinating in respect of verbs. Simple (non-compound) singular nouns however are monomorphemic. |
| morphological classification (2) | Ga is generally head-marking at sentence and phrase levels, but case is not grammatically marked and there is no gender or nominal class. On the other hand, Adjectives and the Indefinite Specifier show number agreement with the head noun. |
| Nominal Phrases | In the following fields follows a description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of nominal constituents |
| syntactic structure | The linear ordering in the Noun phrase is as follows: Identifier-Possessor-Modifier Noun-Head Noun-Adjective-Numeral-Indefinite Specifier-Determiner-Definite marker-Quantifier-Intensifier. A minimal NP consists of a noun or pronoun. |
| nominal modification | The head of a nominal phrase may be modified by a possessive phrase, by adjectives, numbers and the other elements specified above, and by relative clauses. Many adjectives and the Indefinite specifier (ko) agree in number with the head noun. |
| nominal specification | |
| possession | Possession is expressed by simple juxtaposition Possessor-Possessum, except that if the Possessor is plural, the Possessum takes a prefix a-. |
| pronominal system | The independent (Absolute) pronoun form occurs as object and at the beginning of a sentence if focused or topicalized. Subject and possessive pronouns are prefixed to the verb or noun respectively. |
| Verbal Phrases | In the following fields serve for the description of some of the basic morpho-syntactic properties of verbal constituents |
| word order | Ga is a strictly SVO language. |
| TAM | Aspect, mood, deixis and polarity are marked on the verb by a combination of prefixes and suffixes. Most aspect and mood prefixes are expressed segmentally after an NP subject but by tone on the preceding syllable when the subject is a pronoun prefix. The Aorist is expressed by downstep between a High tone-final subject and a High tone-initial verb - which means that often it is not expressed and the verb appears in its basic form. |
| infinitival forms | Ga has no true infinitives. However a nominalized form occurs frequently as the complement of certain classes of verb. |
| verbal constructions | Most verbs in Ga may occur intransitively or transitively. Some also occur ditransitively. Serial verb constructions are common, usually limited to two verb phrases. Light verbs occur mainly in sentences expressing properties, and a few (different verbs) typically occur with unified objects. |
| Adpositions | Postpositions in Ga may head both subjects and objects of sentences. Formally they are identical to possessive phrases. There are very few true prepositions, but a number of verbs may head 'verbid' phrases that are more or less comparable to prepositional phrases. Prepositional or verbid phrases are invariably adjunctival. Postpositional phrases are rarely or never adjuncts. |
| Complementation | Complement clauses follow the verb. Depending on the verb, a complementizer may be optional or required. |
| 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 |
| Short Bibliography | Dakubu, M.E. Kropp ed., 2009. Ga-English Dictionary with English-Ga Index. 2nd edition. Accra: Black Mask Publishers.
Dakubu, M.E. Kropp, 2006. Parlons Ga, langue et culture d'Accra (Ghana). Paris: L'Harmattan |