Difference between revisions of "Typological Features Template for Attie"

Revision as of 20:33, 30 March 2010

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 has been described as 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 realization of respectively ɛ and e. In the verb system when e or ɛ is suffixed to u it becomes ɤ or ʌ.In fact the morphophonemic of this two vowels demonstrates they are not phonemic. Examples: ku-e > ku-ɤ (to be old+Past); ku-ɛ > ku-ʌ (to be old+Imperfect); the second occurrence is the one which speakers used, but instead of using this form some of them use respectively ku-o and ku-ɔ(making aperture assimilation); even in the discourse, speakers use ɔ instead of ʌ in some terms; for example lʌ (down) is pronounced lɔ.Since I consider the nasal feature as a syllable feature I assume there is no nasal vowel in this language. In definitive the vowel system of Attie is: i e ɛ a u o ɔ. It is the same system as the Baoule language.

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

morphological classification (1)

Attie is an agglutinative language where we can easily separate morphemes; there are prefix and suffix. The usuals prefix are a, o and e: a stands for Agent, o stands for Theme related to an animate referent and e stands for Theme related to an inanimate referent. Consider (1); (1a) shows the basic verb, while (1b) illustrates the deverbal nominal.

(1a) (1b)

the usual suffix is a, e, or ɛ (for the derivation of verbs: e.g: bu "break" > bu-a "give the verdict"; bu "break"> bu-e "broken". Prefix are found with nouns and suffix with verbs. Sometimes they are so merged that we cannot distinguish them. Most of the words in Attie are monosyllabic. They decline a variation from singular to plural.

morphological classification (2)

Nominal Phrases

In a Noun Phrase the first structural position is occupied by the Noun and the last by the Definite. The Noun Phrase has the same structure, mutatis mutandis as the sentence in Attie. They have each a pronominal agreement which shares the same features with the Nominal subject.

syntactic structure

In Attie the Definite is the last constituent of the Nominal Phrase. The Noun is the first constituent. Adjectives precede the Noun; Adjectives of color precede Adjectives of quality or quantity; Numerals follow Adjectives. The genetival morpheme precedes the Noun its determines. When the Nominal Phrase has no overt definite it cannot have a corresponding pronominal agreement.

abijan ʃukusɔn dze ʃuku

“Students of Abidjan went to school”

abijan

Np

ʃukusɔn
ʃuku	sɔn
school	AGT
N

dze

goVstem

V

ʃuku

school

N

*abijan ʃukusɔn ba dze ʃuku

“Students of Abidjan went to school.”

*abijan

N

ʃukusɔn
ʃuku	sɔn
school	AGT
N

ba

They3PL

PN

dze

goVstem

V

ʃuku

school

N

abijan ʃukusɔn ba ba dze ʃuku

“The Abijan students go to school”

abijan

Np

ʃukusɔn
ʃuku	sɔn
school	AGT
N

ba

DEF

PN

ba

they3PL

PN

dze

go

V

ʃuku

school

N

*abijan ʃukusɔn ba dze ʃuku

*abijan

N

ʃukusɔn
ʃuku	sɔn
school	AGT
N

ba

DEF

PN

dze

go

V

ʃuku

school

N

nsafu-ɔn o boka mpɛtɛ-ɔ

“The soldier helped the orphan”

ǹsáfùɔ̄ɔ̀n
nsafu	ɔn
soldier	DEF
N

ò

o

3SG

PN

bōkà

boka

helped

V

mpɛtɛɔ
mpɛtɛ	ɔ
orphan	DEF
N

nsafu-ɔn o mpɛtɛ boka-a

“The soldier's helping of the orphan”

ǹsáfùɔ̄ɔ̀n
ǹsáfùn	ɔ̄	ɔ̀n
soldier	FOC	DEF
N

ó

his3SGPOSS

PN

mɛ̀pɛ́tɛ̀

orphan

N

bókàāà
bókà	ā	à
help		DEF
N

The second structure is rejected because there is no Definite within the Nominal Phrase and yet it possess a corresponding pronominal agreement. The fourth structure is rejected because since the Nominal Phrase has a Def within it is not followed by a corresponding pronominal agreement. The last structure is the nominal corresponding of the previous which is a sentence.

nominal modification

Nouns change from singular to plural. Most of the words in this language are monosyllabic. The vowel changes from 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"

nominal specification

possession

pronominal system

Verbal Phrases

word order

Attie is an SVO language; but in the inaccomplish Aspect the object precede the Verb; in this case the VP has the same pattern as the lexical structure of the Verb.

TAM

infinitival forms

verbal constructions

Adpositions

Complementation

Special Properties

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+|Attie is an SVO language; but in the inaccomplish Aspect the object precede the Verb; in this case the VP has the same pattern as the lexical structure of the Verb.
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 |TAM