Typological Features Template for Akan (Asante)
From TypeCraft
| Feature | Description |
| Phonological Features | In the following fields you describe the phonological inventory of your language |
| Vowel inventory | Akan has ten oral vowels which are grouped into two sets according to ATR status setI: a i e u o set II ɔ ɛ υ æ I. |
| Vowel harmony | Vowel harmony in Akan operates according to a tongue root system. Usually, nominal and verbal prefixes agree in ATR value with the vowels in the verb or noun stem. |
| Consonant inventory | In this field you describe the consonants of [your language] |
| Tone | Akan makes a distinction between two main tones: High and Low. in other cases, a high tone can be downstepped when it follows a sequence of low tones. |
| Syllable Structure | The basic syllable structure is CV |
| Morpho-syntactic Features | In the following fields you describe some of the basic morpho-syntactic parameters of [your language] |
| 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 marking possession, the possessor comes before the possessee. Akan does not make a distinction between lienable and alienable possession. |
| pronominal system | Pronouns are expressed by both bound and free morphemes.
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 | The basic word order in the language is strictly SVO |
| TAM | It has been argued that Akan is basically an aspectual language which makes a distinction between past and present time. Aspect is marked by either a prefix or tone. For example, the progressive in Asante is marked by a lengthening of the last vowel of the noun (even though in many works linguists use the prefix 're-' which is used by the Akuapim dialect). The habitual in Asante is a high tone marked on the final vowel of the verb stem. To show past time, there is a lengthening of the final vowel of the verb stem. |
| 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 | Akan uses multi-verb constructions to convey two or more events. Such constructions can lack cordination or conjunction but would still be acceptable. |
| Adpositions | Akan uses posptpositions as against prepositions. the postpositions are basically relational nouns referring to body part or object parts. They can be head of the Noun Phrase. |
| Complementation | In this field you describe complementation strategies. Does [your language] make use of complementizers? |
| Special Properties of [your language] |
