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A Closer Look at the Akan Relativiser


Kofi Busia Abrefa

Abstract

This paper provides an alternative viewpoint on the length and tone of the relativiser in Akan. The relativiser has been analysed as a long vowel with either a high-low tone (HL) (Saah, 2010) or a mid-low tone (McCracken, 2013). However, in this paper, we posit an underlying short vowel with a low tone (L) for the
relativiser. We further show that it receives a high tone (H) from an adjacent H; making it a syllable with a contour tone at the phonetic level (i.e. â ). The contour tone then affects the length of the relativiser at the phonetic level, making it slightly longer than its original length.


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eISSN: 2458-746X
print ISSN: 0855-1502