Avatime, also known as Afatime, Sideme, or Sia, is a Kwa language of the Avatime (self designation: Kedone (m.sg.)) people of eastern Ghana. The Avatime live primarily in the seven towns and villages of Amedzofe, Vane, Gbadzeme, Dzokpe, Biakpa, Dzogbefeme, and Fume.
Phonology
Avatime is a tonal language with three tones, has vowel harmony, and has been claimed to have doubly articulated fricatives.
Vowels
Avatime has nine vowels, /i ɪ e ɛ a ɔ o ʊ u/, though the vowels /ɪ ʊ/ have been overlooked in most descriptions of the language. It is not clear if the difference between /i e o u/ and /ɪ ɛ ɔ ʊ/ is one of advanced and retracted tongue root (laryngeal contraction), as in so many languages of Ghana, or of vowel height: different phonetic parameters support different analyses.[note 1]
Avatime has vowel harmony. A root many not mix vowels of the relaxed /i e o u/ and contracted /ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ/ sets, and prefixes change vowels to harmonize with the vowels of the root. For example, the human singular gender prefix is /ɔ ~ o/, and the human plural is /a ~ e/: /o-ze/ "thief", /ɔ-ka/ "father"; /be-ze/ "thieves", /ba-ka/ "fathers"; also /o-bu/ "bee" but /ɔ-bʊ/ "god".[note 2]
Vowels may be long or short. Records from 1910[clarification needed] showed that all vowels could be nasalized, but that is disappearing, and few words with nasal vowels remained by the end of the century.
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Velar | Labio- velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ŋʷ | ||
| Plosive | Voiceless | p | t | k | k͡p | ||
| Voiced | b | d | ɡ | ɡ͡b | |||
| Affricate | Voiceless | t͡s ~ t͡ʃ | |||||
| Voiced | d͡z ~ d͡ʒ | ||||||
| Fricative | Voiceless | f | s | x | xʷ | ||
| Voiced | β | v | z | ɣ | ɣʷ | ||
| Approximant | l ~ r | j | w | ||||
/ɸ/ is found in Ewe borrowings,[2] as is /kʷ/, which can be seen to be distinct from /kw/ (which cannot be followed by another consonant) in the loanword /àkʷlɛ̄/ 'boat'.[3]
The language has been claimed to have doubly articulated fricatives /x͡ɸ ɣ͡β/. However, as with similar claims for Swedish [ɧ], the labial articulation is not fricated, and these are actually labialized velars, /xʷ ɣʷ/.[4] All velar fricatives are quite weak, and are more often [h ɦ hʷ ɦʷ].[2]
The affricates vary between [t͡s], [d͡z] and [t͡ʃ], [d͡ʒ], which may be a generational difference.[5]
Phonotactics
Syllables are V, CV, CGV, and N: Avatime allows consonant-approximant clusters, where the approximant may be /l/, /w/, /j/. There is also a syllabic nasal, which takes its own tone: /kpāŋ̄/ "many".
Any consonant but /n/, /l/ may form a cluster with /l/: /ɔ̀kplɔ̄nɔ̀/ "table", /ɔ̀ɡblāɡɛ̄/ "snake", /káɣʷlɪ̀tsã̀/ "chameleon", /sɪ̄ŋʷlɛ̀sɛ̃̀/ "mucous". After a coronal consonant, the /l/ is pronounced [r].
When two vowels come together, they are either separated by a glottal stop [ʔ], fuse into a single vowel, or the first vowel reduces to a semivowel. In the latter case, the four front vowels reduce to [j] and three of the back vowels reduce to [w], but /u/ is fronted to [ɥ].
However, there are /Cw/ and /Cj/ sequences which are not derived from vowel sequences. These are /fw/, /mw/, /fj/, /vj/, /βj/, /tj/, /dj/, /sj/, /zj/, /lj/, /ŋʷj/.
Notes
References
- ^ Avatime at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ a b Schuh 1995, p. 33.
- ^ Schuh 1995, p. 36.
- ^ Schuh 1995, p. 35.
- ^ Schuh 1995, p. 34.
- Maddieson, Ian (October 1995). "Collapsing vowel harmony and doubly-articulated fricatives: two myths about the phonology of Avatime". UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics. 91: Fieldwork Studies of Targeted Languages III: 67–84.
- Schuh, Russel (1995). "Aspects of Avatime phonology". Studies in African Linguistics. 24 (1): 31–67. doi:10.32473/sal.v24i1.107410. S2CID 118027311.
External links
- The UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive: Avatime - Phonetic fieldwork on Avatime
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