Typological Features Template for Akan

Feature

Description

Phonological Features

In the following we describe the phonological inventory of Akan and the features that its dialects share. Some of these dialects are Asante, Fante and Akuapem as well as Bono. Dialects of Akan are mainly characterised by phonological differences, but other difference can also be described.

Vowel Inventory

Vowels are described under five headings: oral, nasalised, and long vowels, diphthongs, and vowel harmony (or vowel combinations across syllables).

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 Asante and Akuapem. So you can see from the example below that, where Akuapem and Asante use [æ] Fante uses [e]

Asante/Akuapem	Ph.Trans Asante/Akuapem	Fante	PH.Trans Fante	English
ani	/æni/	enyiwa	/enyiwa/	'eyes'

In the orthography, the letters e and o represent contrastive vowels: e represents [e] and [ɪ], and o represents [o] and [ʊ] as illustrated in the table below.

Akan	Ph.Trans	English	Akan	Ph.Trans	English
te(w)	/tɪ(w)/	'to tear'	kɛsi	/kɛsɪ/	'big'
fie	/fie/	'home'	esiw/esie	/(esiw)(esie)/	'ant hill'
to(w)	/tʊw/	'to throw'	horo	/hʊhʊ/	'to wash'
obi	/obi/	'someone'	ako	/ako/	'parrot'

NB"Ph.Trans" refers to phonetic transcription.

Esi bɛkɔ owura no hɔ

“Esi will go to the gentleman”

Ési´

Esi

esiSBJ

N

bɛ́kɔ́
bɛ́	kɔ́
FUT	go
V

oˋwuˋraˋ

owura

gentlemanOBJ

N

noˋ

no

DEF

DET

hɔ´

hɔ

thereDXSDIST

PN

In the example above we observe the occurrence of all 7 vowel letters used in Akan. Vowels carry tone(s). This is discussed later under "Tone".

B. Nasalised Vowels

Nasalisation in Akan can be contrastive (see table below), and as the result of assimilation nasality can spread to following vowels (nkwa: /ŋ̃kʷã/ - 'life'). There are five nasalised vowels in Akan: ἶ, ĩ, ã, ῦ, and ũ

Fante	Asante	Akuapem	English
hũ - hu	hũ - hu	hũw - huw	see - blow (air)

(Dolphyne 1988:4)

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

The length of the vowel may determine meaning. Orthographically,long vowels are represented through doubling.

Akan	English	Akan	English
da	sleep	daa	everyday
sa	dance	saa	exactly
* kɔ	go	kɔɔ	red

Verbs in Akan are inflected for tense/aspect by lengthening the final vowel. Oral vowels and nasalised vowels except the unadvanced high front vowel [ɪ] can be lengthened (see table below). The asterisks indicates the vowels that can be nasalised.

Vowels	Oral vowel	English	Long vowel	English	Nasal	English	Long Nasal	English
* i	ti	head/chase	tii	chased	tἷ	scratch	tἷἷ	scratched
* ɪ	fɪ	go out	fɪɪ	cameout	fĩ	ribs
e	hwe	to suck	hwee	zero
ɛ	sɛ	resempble	sɛɛ	resembled
* u	pu	spit	puu	spat	pũ	reject/smoke	pũũ	rejected/smoked
* ʊ	tʊ	throw	tʊʊ	threw	tῦ	bake/roast	tῦῦ	roasted/baked
* a	ka	bite	kaa	bit	kã	drive/say	kãã	drove/said
æ	æni	eyes	dææbi	no
o	som	worship	apoo	cheating
ɔ	kɔ	go	kɔɔ	went

D. Diphthongs

As indicated above, the occurrence of identical vowels in an Akan word is considered as long vowels. There are also occurrence of sequences of nonidentical vowels. These are produced when the tongue glides from one articulation to another.

 Example 7:

Yaa dae

“Yaa slept”

Yaa

yaa

YaaSBJ

Np

dae
da	e
sleep	PAST
Vitr

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.

Vowel harmony

The harmony of vowels is defined as the restriction on the occurence of certain vowels in the same word. In the production of Akan vowels, the position of the tongue determines whether a vowel has the feature "advanced tongue root" or "retracted tongue root", +ATR and -ATR respectively. The + Advanced Tongue root vowels are produced by pushing the root of the tongue forward. For the production of the unadvanced tongue root vowels. The root of the tongue is retracted or pushed backward.

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

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

This feature places restrictions on the occurrence of vowels from set A and set B. Most Akan words have vowels from either set A or B.

Example 8:

+ATR	English	-ATR	English
/koko/	'chest'	/kɔkɔ(w)/	'red'
/Kun(u)/	'husband'	/kʊn/	'neck'
/efie/	'home'	/afɪ/	'year'
/adi/	'has eaten'	/ædɪ/	'thing'

So the vowels can be paired as below; those on the left +ATR and on the right -ATR. The front vowels are produced with the front, the central, the center of the tongue and the back, the back part of the tongue.

           Front    Central  Back
            i/ɪ      æ/a     o/ɔ
            e/ɛ              ʊ/u

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.

Akan	English
sika	'money'
kura	'to hold'
dua	'to plant'
nyinsɛn	'to be pregnant'
pinkyɛn	'come close'
ohia	's/he needs'

We can see from the above examples that vowels /a/ occurred with the advanced vowels /i, u, o/ and /ɛ/ which is also -ATR, occurred with +ATR vowel /i/.

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

Orthography	Phonetic Symbols	+ATR	-ATR
i	i	i
e	ɪ/e	e	ɪ
ɛ	ɛ		ɛ
a	æ/a	æ	a
ɔ	ɔ		ɔ
o	o/ʊ	o	ʊ
u	u	u

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

Consonant inventory

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:

	Bilabial	Labiodentals	Alveolar	Pre-palatal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	p,b		t,d			k/kʷ,g/gʷ	ʔ
Fricative		f	s	ç(hy)			h
Labialized Fricatives (-Voice)				çʷ(hw)
Affricate				ʥ(gy)/ʨ(ky)
Labialized affricate				ʨʷ,ʥʷ
Lateral(voiced)			l
Nasal(voiced)	m		n		ɲ(ny)	ŋ(n)
Labialized Nasal (voiced)					ɲʷ(nw)	ŋʷ(nw)
Glide (voiced)			r		y	w

Examples: 9 Bilabial consonants

 Example n:
           Akan   English   Akan    English    Akan    English
           /papa/  'father'  /ɔbaa/  'girl'     /maame/  'mother'

 [f] is the only Labio-dental consonant in Akan.
 Example: 10
           Akan   English  
           /fɛrɪ/   'shy'

Alveolar consonants:

 Example: 11
           Akan   English   Akan    English    Akan    English
          /atadeɛ/ 'clothe' /sɪrɪ/  'laughs' /ɛnora/  'yesterday'
 
 [hy, hw, ky, gy]

Tone

In this field you indicate if [your language] is a tone language and which tones are used; does [your language] have lexical tone?

Syllable Structure

In this field you indicate the basic syllable structures of [your language].

Typological Features Template for Akan - morpho-syntax