Tone of Nouns in the Asante Dialect of Akan

Abstract

Akan (Niger-Congo, Kwa) is a tone language spoken mainly in Ghana. This paper deals with the tonal behavior of Akan nouns. First, the tone of nouns in isolated forms is presented. It is pointed out that the affixes have their own tones, and that there are five tone types of the roots. Also, it is shown that the unit for tone distribution is a syllable, not a mora.

  Second, the tone of possessive noun phrases is discussed. Dolphyne (1986, 1988) observes that there are two tonal patterns of noun roots in possessive noun phrases regardless of their tone types, and based on this difference, she classifies nouns into two classes. The situation in Asante dialect, however, is more complicated because Class I possessive noun phrases seem to have undergone a historical ‘tone shift’, as Stewart (1983) and Dolphyne (1986) have argued.

  While Stewart (1983) defines the tone shift as deferment of the change in tone register, I present my analysis along the lines of Dolphyne (1986), who defines the tone shift as a shift of the floating H to the root initial syllable. Additionally, although both Stewart and Dolphyne explain that the floating H is lexically posited in front of the roots of Class I, I propose that the floating H should historically be attributed to the possessive clitic itself. Lastly, I emphasize that the critical difference in tones of possessive phrases between Class I and Class II is that in the former class, the tone of the prefix is not realized.