The morphophonology of the Akan reduplicated verb-form

Abstract

This paper discusses the interaction between constituent formation and alteration of sounds (i.e., morphophonology) in Akan reduplicated verb-forms. Specifically, we strive to look into two issues; the morphology of reduplicated verb stems and how the morphological manifestation(s) affect certain target sounds. With its morphology, we observe that reduplication of the Akan verb-stem is generally total and, through the Morphological Doubling Theory (Inkelas 2005; Inkelas and Zoll 2005), reduplication of Akan verb-stems is viewed as the double (or multiple) occurrence of a morphological constituent meeting a particular morpho-semantic description. That is to say, while there could be differences in structure between the reduplicant and the base, they are subject to a common phonology that determines a resulting shape of an output. With morphophonology, we observe that three issues are relevant in the discussion of the phonology of the reduplicated verbs in Akan. These are the application of vowel harmony, vowel shift in terms of height, and the realization of tonal semblance. Through thorough discussions, the paper finally explains that reduplication of verb-stems in Akan is morphophonologically driven.

Keywords

• Akan, morphophonology, reduplication, vowel harmony and height, tone

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