ALS 2010 Annual Conference Programme - Australian Linguistic ...

Abakah
Emmanuel Nicholas Abakah (University of Education, Winneba – Ghana)
enabakah@yahoo.com
Tone and Grammar in Akan
This paper is an investigation of grammatical use of tone in the Akan language.
It focuses on grammar induced tonal perturbations in the language as well as
grammatically significant cessation of tonal perturbation in the language.
It will be demonstrated in the central portions of the paper that tone plays a major
role in the grammar of the Akan language. For instance, verbal inflections are
not invariably executed by segmental alternations and/ or extensions as obtained
in the schoolbook grammars but are often brought about by tone replacements
even as the underlying segmental melodies of the verb do not undergo any alternation
at the phonetic stage. Moreover, clausal divergences in the language as
well as tense/aspect and mood distinctions are often the direct result of tonal alternations
only, with the lexical segmental melodies of the clausal stretch playing
no role in the change.
Furthermore, it will be established in this paper that the associative morpheme in
Akan has both segmental and tone melodies in all the dialects but the two are
not linked at the underlying level of representation. Thus, whereas the segmental
component is toneless, the tone component, a floating high tone (H), is segmentless,
that is, it has no segmental support underlyingly. However, at the phonetic
level, the segmental and tonal constituents of the associative morpheme may be
linked by an association line in some of the Akan dialects. In other dialects the
associative floating H may be donated to the nominal prefix of the possessed NP
whereas in yet other dialects the said floating H may be donated to the initial
tone-bearing unit of the possessor noun root. Tone sandhi and non-sandhi rules
that are grammatically significant in Akan will also be painstakingly explored in
this paper.