Reduction of noun class suffixes in Akebu

Abstract

This paper presents a pilot instrumental study of phonetic reduction of noun class suffi xes in Akebu (Kwa, Ghana-Togo mountain, West Africa). Noun class suffi xes starting with a glide are regularly perceived as omitted or almost omitted, and therefore full and reduced variants can be distinguished for such nouns. A formant measurement of fi nal parts of full and reduced forms of the same nouns has shown that, fi rst, for a given fi nal part of a noun stem the reduced variant is phonetically close to the corresponding full variant and, second, for a given fi nal part of a noun stem the forms with reduction of different suffi xes are phonetically different.

Phonological and acoustic properties of ATR in the vowel system of Akebu (Kwa)

“…The analysis of the Akebu vowel system in Table 1 is based on data collected by the first author during two field trips in 2012 and 2019 to the village of Djon in the prefecture of Akebu. It partially differs from the descriptions in the prior literature on Akebu (Wolf 1907; Heine 1968; Koffi 1984; Storch & Koffi 2000; Djitovi 2003; Adjeoda 2008; Amoua 2011; Sossoukpe 2012, 2017; Shluinsky 2020).…”

“…Our experiment is the first detailed acoustic study of Akebu vowels (cf. a brief pilot study in Shluinsky 2020). Phonetic data were collected by the first author from six male Akebu speakers: AD (b.…”

“…The existence of a high central vowel in Akebu was first claimed by Sossoukpe (2012, 2017). However, both Sossoukpe and Shluinsky (2020) analyse both interior vowels as [+ATR]. No explicit grounds for this are given, but apparently this analysis was dictated by Dynamic Rule 1 of vowel harmony, discussed below in §9 (cf.…”

“…Akebu manifests a trend for certain kinds of vowel reduction and loss both at the left and the right word edges. Suffix reduction is discussed by Shluinsky (2020). Reduction to the left of the root is still unstudied, but we attested a shift of the [−ATR] high vowels /ʊ, ɪ/ towards the interior high vowel /ᵻ/ in some cases of partial reduplication in verbal nouns (see §1.4.4): / yᵻ̄ =yɔ̄ɔ̄-wə̀/ ‘something tender’, / kpᵻ́ =kpɛ́ɛ́lɪ̄-wə̀/ ‘something white’ (instead of expected /*yʊ̄=yɔ̄ɔ̄-wə̀/, /*kpɪ́=kpɛ́ɛ́lɪ̄-wə̀/).…”