Normalization in Akan Language (Twi) under the Autosegemental Theory
1.1 Introduction
The purpose of this term paper is to assess the Twi language's morphophonological processes
and the nouns that result from those processes. This is going to be done through the lens of
the Autosegmental theory. This process is known as "nominalization." Nominalization was
defined by Appah (2003) as the mechanisms through which word forms, phrases, and
sentences are transformed into nouns. In view of this, nominal derivation and nominalization
would be utilised synonymously in this paper. The next section looks at brief background
information of the Akan people and the Akan language. This is followed by a brief literature
review that details the nominal derivation or nominalization, autosegemental theory and how
it applies to this morphophonological process. The next section will be devoted to the
presentation and discussion of the data followed by the conclusion.
1.2 The Akan and the Akan Language
About 44% of Ghana's population speaks the Akan language as their mother tongue, with a
significant portion of the rest using it as a second language (Dolphyne 1996: xi). In fact, it
transcends arbitrary limits and is extensively spoken in eastern Côte d'Ivoire. Since the 1950s,
the term "Akan" has been used to refer to both the ethnic group and its members' languages
(Dolphyne 1988: xi). According to Keremateng and Nkansa (1996), the name "Akan" itself is
derived from the Twi word "Kan(e)," which means "first or foremost" in English. The
subdivisions of Akan people are as follows: Asante, Brong, Kwahu (Kwawu), Akwamu,
Akyem, Anum, Awutu, Efutu, Akuapem, Agona, Fante, Wassa, Nzema, Ahanta, Aowin,
Sehwi (Sefwi), and Baoule, Anyi, Abron, and Nzema in Cote D'Ivoire as well as other minor
tribes (Obeng 1999: 19). Obeng is cautious to note that while all of these individuals are
Akans, that is, they are members of the Akan ethnic group, not all of them speak Akan (20).
For instance, the Awutu, Efutu, and Anum speak Guan, whereas the Nsema speak Nzema. As
a result, it has been proposed and is widely believed that speakers of Akan dialects only make
up a small portion of the Akan population in general.
Akuapem, Asante, and Fante are three Akan languages that have achieved literary importance
(Dolphyne 1988: xi). It can be challenging for an Asante person, for instance, to comprehend
a book in Fante and vice versa, despite the fact that all of the Akan dialects are essentially
fundamentally understandable (Obeng 20). Through coordinated efforts of the Language
Teaching Centre and Linguistics Department of the University of Ghana at Legon and the
Akan Language Committee of the Bureau of Ghanaian Languages, a unified standard
orthography has been developed to address this problematic situation (20). Asante and
Akuapem speech is referred to as "Twi" (i.e. Asante Twi, Akuapem Twi), despite the fact that
the name "Akan" serves as a general term for all Akan language dialects. Akan dialects other
than Twi can be distinguished by the subgroups to which they belong. Additionally, it should
be noted that while some standard languages are really spoken, Standard Akan is not. One's
background is actually pretty obvious based on enunciation and tone variations. For the
purposes of this paper, I will concentrate on the Asante Twi using examples from it to
analyse the language's morphophonological processes and the nouns that result from those
processes under the umbrella of the autosegemental theory.
2.0 Literature Review
2.1 The Autosegemental Theory
Autosegmental Phonology is a framework of phonological analysis proposed by John
Goldsmith in his PHD thesis in 1976. As a theory of phonological representation,
Autosegmental Phonology developed a formal account of ideas that had been sketched in
earlier work by several American linguists in decade of 1940 presented a fair amount of
discussion regarding suprasegmental, with contribution by, among others, Block,Firth,
Harris, Haugen,Smith and Wells . All begin with the initial assumption spelled out clearly,
for example, in Harris (1944) and Block (1948) that logically the first procedure in linguistic
analysis is to "Slice" the linguistic signal vertically into a number of pieces or can be called
Segments . Care must be taken ,of course, to make sure that the signal is sliced finely enough
to find the truly minimal units of utterance. Once this process of " Segmentation" has been
Completed, the formal representation of a signal Sliced into Segments is a linear Sequence of
elements ( Goldsmith,1976:5).
The Segmental approach is seen as a set of representation which consist of a linear
arrangement of segments (or unordered set of features) and boundaries that are dependent on
morphological and syntactic criteria . By contrast, the autosegmental phonology sees
phonology as comprising of several tiers , each tier consisting of a linear arrangement of
elements; these are linked to each other by association lines which indicate how they are to be
coarticulated. (Crystal, 2008:45-46) .
Non linear theories claim to give solution to the problems of sound pattern of English
especially it`s linear representation of phonology. Linear representation can be used to deal
with many phonological rules but it is less appropriate to be used with suprasegmental .
These non linear theories are considered the most developed theories of phonology now a
days ( Folly,1970:57) .
2.1.1 Principles of Autosegmental Theory
Goldsmith states that a theory as autosegmental can be judged according to three criteria:
a) The theory should be able to describe any phenomena in the language that the standard
theory cannot.
b) The theory must present constraint on the acceptable representation.
c) The theory must provide constraints on the possible tonlogical rule in the language. The
following points (Contour tones, parallel tiers, tone stability) are all considered problems
on the standard theory (Generative phonology), and at the same time they are points in
favour of Autosegmental theory.
Autosegmental phonology was initially developed in response to the challenge of developing
an adequate theory of tone. Its immediate source of inspiration was the work of Williams
1971 and Leben 1973; these were the first to introduce non-linear structures into generative
phonology in their treatments of tone systems in West African languages such as Margi, Igbo
and Mende. In the model proposed by these writers, underlying tones were represented on
separate tiers from the feature matrices representing vowels and consonants; they were
subsequently merged with these matrices by Tone Mapping Rules that applied in the course
of derivation, creating single-tiered representations in surface structure.
The principal innovation of autosegmental phonology, as presented in Goldsmith 1976, was
the idea that tone mapping rules do not merge tonal and segmental representations, but
associate their elements by means of formal entities known as Association Lines. In this
framework, phonological representations consist of parallel tiers of phonological segments,
both tonal and segmental (Stein & Mcgary, 1992).
Tonal Representation
t
t
t
H
H= high tone
L
L=low tone
t
H
L
t= any tone-bearing unit (vowels or syllables)
Elements of each tier, called AUTOSEGMENTALS, are sequentially ordered; elements of
adjacent tiers are simultaneous if and only if they are linked by association lines. In this
model, all tiers remain independent throughout derivations: at no point is the tonal tier
merged with segmental tier.
2.2 Nominalization
The term nominalization has been defined in a number of different ways in the literature. It
was a term used in traditional Generative Grammar to describe the development of a noun
phrase from a subordinate sentence, such as our arrival here from we came here (Crystal
1991). However, in more recent times, it has come to be used to describe how nouns are
derived from other word classes, namely adjectives and verbs (Appah, 2003). The definitions
that follow will help to further explain the idea. According to Chomsky (1970),
nominalization is the act of creating a noun from another word class. An example of this is
red +ness becoming redness.
The process of nominalization involves creating nouns from verbs and adjectives.
e.g. zo – ‘run’, zoou/zoobu – ‘the act of running’, faa – ‘bad’, faalong – ‘bad
deed/evil’(Bodomo1997:217).
Nominalization is the process or result of forming nouns from some other part of speech by
the use of an appropriate derivational affix e.g. green + ness – greenness, odd + ity – oddity,
(Crystal 1991).
Nominalizations are those that derivational processes which produce nouns from verbs or
adjectives (Fabregas & Scalise, 2012).
Nominalization is the process or result of using a noun phrase instead of a verbal construction
or a subordinate clause, e.g. the acceptance of the proposal is a first requirement rather than It
is first of all required that you accept what we propose here, (Hartmann and Stork 1972).
The definition will then be comparable to that of Akanlig-Pare (1999), who described
nominal derivation as the process of changing word forms into nominals without mentioning
clauses and phrases. For both non-category-changing derivations, such as the emergence of
nouns from other nouns, and category-changing derivations, such as those involving verbs
and adjectives.
Bodomo (1997) defined nominalization as "a process which involves the formation of nouns
from verbs and adjectives" in order to be more explicit about the categories from which
nominals in Dagaare can be generated. Additionally, Bodomo (idem.) restricts the word
classes from which nominals are derived to only verbs and adjectives while failing to explain
how the formation occurs. By defining nominal derivation as "the process or result of
forming a noun from words (verbs, adjectives, and other nouns), phrases, or clauses" and
taking into account how the phenomena is seen in Akan, Appah (2003) broadens the
categories listed by Bodomo.
One fact that connects the aforementioned definitions of nominalization is that it causes
category shift, according to Appah (2003). A closer examination of these definitions,
however, reveals that they clearly limit the triggers of the nominalization process to segments
or morphemes, such as affixes, and say nothing about how supra-segmentals like tone can
change the category of a lexical item, as is the case in tone languages like Twi. For instance,
in Twi a noun like pàpá 'father' is nominalized by altering the tonal pattern to pàpà 'fan'.
Therefore, there is the need to widen the domain within which nominals can be formed in our
definition of the process. Appah (2003) proposed a more holistic definition of the subject to
capture both segmental (affixation) and suprasegmentals (tone) nominalization of lexical
items, especially in tone languages and build on the last definition by suggesting that
nominalization in Akan can be defined as the process by which nominals are derived from
lexical items such as verbs, adjectives and other nouns usually by way of affixation or by
tonal marking.
3.0 Presentation and discussion of the Data
Nouns in Twi are derived through a number of processes. Affixation, compounding,
reduplication, conversion, borrowing, nasalization, and tone are a few of these processes. For
the purpose of this paper, I am restricting the analysis to affixation.
3.1 Affixation
According to Appah (2003), this procedure entails the insertion of a nominalizing affix
(prefix, suffix, or both) to the structure that enters the derivation process, i.e., the root or stem
that is to be nominalized. In Twi, the following affixes are frequently used to create nouns
from various word classes, including verbs, nouns, and adjectives: [o-,e-,-,m-,n-,-fo,-nyi,nom,-wa,-ba]. It has been noted in the literature that when these affixes are joined to verbs,
nouns, and adjectives, multiple nominalization techniques are realised that change
functionally depending on the relationship of the new noun to the original words. Action
nominalization, stative nominalization, and participation nominalization are some of these
nominalization techniques (actor, patient, instrument, place, way, product, diminutive,
feminine, nationality, identification, clan nouns, etc.).
3.1.1 Action Nominalisation
Action nominals are derived from action verbs and may refer to the action (usually in the
abstract), process or occurrence designated by the verb (Appah, 2003). The following are
examples of action nominalization from verbs in table 1.
Table 1:
Nominal Prefix
Stem
aenaaam-
dɔ
dware
hyira
didi
sa
kenkan
boa
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
gloss
weed
bath
bless
eat
dance
read
to help
Nominalized
Word
gloss
adɔ
weeding
edware
bathing
nhyira
blessing
edidi
eating
asa
dancing
akekan
reading
mboa
help
3.1.2 Participant Nominalization
As the introduction to this subsection demonstrated, the phrase "participant nominalization"
actually refers to a collection of nominalization techniques. It is a verb-based nominalization
technique, according to Payne (1997), that produces a noun that relates to one of the
participants in the event denoted by the verb root. According to this theory, Payne only
allowed verb stems to be derivated; nevertheless, in the opinion of Appah (2003), nouns are
also included. Languages often employ a variety of participant nominalization strategies,
according to Payne cited in Appah (2003), and the distinction between the various participant
nominalization strategies often, but not always, has to do with which participant is referred
to. The following are participant nominalization subcategories.
3.1.2.1 Agentive Nominalization
Arthur (2017) says, in Twi the nominal prefix (vowel or homorganic nasal) and the suffix (ni) and (-foɔ) are attached to nouns and verbs to refers to the agent or actor in the action or
process designated by the verb and represent the agent of the activity named by the noun
stem. The output of this nominalization becomes the performer of the action or the activity
named by the nouns. Examples of agentive nominalization in Twi are as follows:
Nominal Prefix
ɔɔo-
o-
+
+
+
Stem
twerε
bro
kua
gloss
Write
Drink
Farming
Nominal
suffix
foɔ
foɔ
foɔ
Nominalized
Word
gloss
ɔtwerεfoɔ
writer
ɔbrofoɔ
drunkard
okuafoɔ
Farmer
+
sika
Money
ni
sikani
+
+
kuna
sua
widowhood
learn
ni
ni
kunani
osuani
Wealthy
person
widow
learner
3.1.2.2 Patient Nominalization
This is a nominalization strategy that results in a noun that refers to the patient of that which
is designated by the verb and the noun. In Twi patient nominalization takes the same way as
agent nominalization. The following are examples of patient nominalization in Twi;
Nominal Prefix
ɔoo-
Stem
soma
wu
Kuna
+
+
+
gloss
send
To die
widowhood
Nominal
suffix
foɔ
foɔ
foɔ
Nominalized
Word
gloss
ɔsomafoɔ
messenger
owufoɔ
The dead
okunafoɔ
A widow
3.1.2.3 Location Nominalization
This is a nominalization strategy that results in a noun that refers to a location where the
activity designated by the verb tends to occur (Appah, 2003). In Twi the prefix (a-,e-) and the
suffix (-e) are used to derive location nominalization by attaching it to a verb stem to show
where the action of the verb is taken place. Example of location nouns are as follows.
Nominal Prefix
aae-
+
+
+
Stem
soeε
hyehyε
dware
gloss
Put down
To arrange
To bath
Nominal
suffix
eee-
Nominalized
Word
asoeεe
ahyehyεe
edwareε
gloss
Resting place
Parking place
bathroom
3.1.2.4 Diminutive Nominalization
Diminutive nominalizations are nouns that are derived from nouns to show the minute form
of the noun. In Twi the suffix (-wa,-ba) are used to derive diminutive nouns from nouns.
Examples of such nouns are as follows:
Stem
ɔkra
oburoni
asɔre
gloss
cat
A white
church
Nominal
suffix
ba
ba
ba
ɔdehyeε
Royal/noble
wa
Nominalized
Word
gloss
ɔkraba
Resting place
oburoniba
A young while, a doll
asɔreba
Church member/child
of a church
ɔdehyeewa
A young noble man
ɔman
A state
ba
ɔmanba
Citizen of a state
3.1.2.5 Feminine Nominalization
As it is in every language, Twi also has a way of deriving feminine name from masculine
names. Mostly the suffix –bea, –wa/waa, ba and –maa aare attached to masculine name to
derive feminine form of a word. Examples are illustrated below.
Masculine
Ofori
Ado
suffix
Feminine
oforiwaa
Adobea
ɔpare
waa
bea
bea
Frempɔn
maa
Frempɔmaa
Ampea
ba
Ampeaba
ɔparebea
3.5 Conclusion
There are lots of processes of nominal derivation in Akan but this work was centred on
affixation in the Twi which are the most dominant way of deriving nouns in Akan. Segments
which are put together to get nominal words in Twi were discovered in affixation. On the
theoretical perspective, autosegmental phonology was used to analyse the phonological
processes which were discovered in affixation as a morphological way of nominal derivation.
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