Difference between revisions of "Typological Features Template for Akan"

The table below shows an overview of the vowels in the language.

Oral Vowels

Akan has 9 or 10 oral vowels, depending on the dialect: [e,ɔ,a,o,ɛ i,u,ɪ,æ,ʊ ]. Vowel [æ] is only used in the Asante and the Akuapem dialects. So you can see from the example below that, where Akuapem and Asante use [æ] Fante uses [e]

In the orthography, the letters e and o represent two contrastive vowels each: e represents both [e] and [ɪ], and o represents both [o] and [ʊ].

For example 1:

NB"Ph.Trans" refers to phonetic transcription.

As can be seen from example 1 above, the vowel e in orthography represents vowels /ɪ/ and /e/, and the vowel o represents /o/, and/ʊ/.

The two sentences above examplify the two contrastive vowels [e]=/e,ɪ/ and [o]= /o,ʊ/. They can be transcribed respectively as follows:

      2a. /bʊsʊmɪ asʊ/
      
      2b. /me tu kwan bronya yi/

So in any written Akan text, you will find some of these 7 vowel letters: i e ɛ a ɔ o u, used in the Akan sentence below.

In example 3, we have the occurrence of all 7 vowel letters in Akan. It can also be mentioned here that the vowels carry tone(s). This will be discussed later under "Tone", However, the two different sets of Akan vowels based on ATR is discussed under "Vowel Harmony" below.

B. Nasalised Vowels

Nasalisation in Akan can be contrastive: as a result of assimilation nasality can spread to following vowels. There are five nasalised vowels in Akan; and they are: ἶ, ĩ, ã, ῦ, and ũ

Example 4:

                                                (Dolphyne 1988:4)        

In tha Akan word below; the nasal [ŋ] spreads to the sounds following it including the vowel [a].

            nkwa:  /ŋ̃kʷã/ - 'life'

NB: Vowels [e, ɛ, ɔ, o] are not normally nasalised in Akan, however [ɛ], and [ɔ] can be nasalised in the Fante dialects when they occur as neighbours with nasal consonants, [m] and [n] in a word or a phrase.

C. Long Vowels Long vowels can determine meaning. Akan orthography represents long vowels by doubling the letter that represents the vowel.

 Examples 5:

The following table represents which Akan vowel can be lengthtend and which ones can be nasalised.

 Example 6:

D. Diphthongs As can be seen in example 7, the verb 'dae' has the vowels [a] and and [ɪ] articulated by the tongue gliding from the central part of the mouth to the middle front part.

Example 7:

Akan has +ATR and -ATR vowels:

           Set A(+ATR) [i, e, æ, o, u]

           Set B(-ATR) [ɪ, ɛ, a, ɔ, ʊ]

The +ATR and -ATR vowels can not co-occur. There should be harmony in the occurence of the vowels in the same word, meaning that vowels of one set (either +ATR or -ATR) can co-occur. The +ATR vowels are produced by pushing the root of the tongue forward and the -ATR vowels on the other hand, are produced by pushing the root of the tongue backwards. Example 8 shows some Akan words where there is harmony of vowel as a result of the advanced tongue root restriction.

Example 8:

Harmony Exceptions: There are few words in Akan that deviates from the harmony rule. The unadvanced vowel /a/ is known to usually occur in such words. However /ɛ/ too does deviate sometime. The following are examples of such deviations.

In summary, these are the vowels and their names in Akan:

           i       Advanced High Front 
           ɪ       Unadvanced High Front
           e       Advanced Mid Front 
           ɛ       Unadvanced Mid Front 
           æ       Advanced Low Central 
           a       Undvanced Low Central
           o       Adavnced Mid Back 
           ɔ       Unadvanced Mid Back 
           u       Advanced High Back 
           ʊ       Unadvanced High Back

Akan has 16 consonants: [j, w, p, b, f, d, t, s, m, n, k, kʷ, h, hʷ, g, gʷ]. The table below gives the articulation of these consonants:

Some consonants are palatized or labialized in Akan as in the words; kyerɛ - /ʨɪrɛ/, 'to show' and dwene - /ʥʷɪnɪ/ 'to think'. There is also free variation especially for the consonants [d],[r] and [l] as in the following Akan words: àkwàdàá, àkwàlàá or àkwàràá, all meaning 'a child'

      Example 9:
 pàpà   father   pápá   good   pàpá   fan

Akan has two types of downsteps; automatic dwonstep and non-automatic downstep. In a sequence of a High-Low-High sequence, the second high tone is downstepped oir lowered in pitch than the first one.

 For example: 10

Example 10 above has a tonal sequence: High-Low-ꜜhigh, meaning that the second high tone is downstepped as a result of the middle low tone. 11 below illustrates a gradual drop of tone in an Akan sentence with Low-High seguence.

  Example 11

  Examples 12:
          a. V-syllable: ɔsa - ɔˋ-sá  - 's/he dances'  
                         ohui- ò-hù-í - 'he saw it'  
         
          b. CV-syllable: kɔ - kɔ´- 'go' 
          
          c. C-syllable:  nsuo -  ǹ-sù-ó  - 'water'  
                          som  -  sò-ḿ    - 'hold it'
                          nkwa -  ŋˋ- kʷá - 'life'
                          etsir - è-tsí-ŕ - 'head'

Akan has syllabic nasals which are often realised as plural markers in nouns and negative markers in verbs.

  For example:13  

Asante has open syllables but Fante and Akuapem may have close syllables.

   For example; 
 Asante: kai - 'to read'
 Fante and Akuapem: kan - 'to read'