Avatime language

Template:Short description Template:More footnotes Template:Template other Template:Infobox ethnonym Avatime, also known as Afatime, Sideme, or Sia, is a Kwa language of the Avatime (self designation: (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, , though the vowels have been overlooked in most descriptions of the language. It is not clear if the difference between and 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.

Avatime has vowel harmony. A root many not mix vowels of the relaxed and contracted sets, and prefixes change vowels to harmonize with the vowels of the root. For example, the human singular gender prefix is , and the human plural is : "thief", "father"; "thieves", "fathers"; also "bee" but "god".

Vowels may be long or short. Records from 1910 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

Avatime consonants

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Velar	Labio- velar
Nasal		Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Plosive	Voiceless	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
	Voiced	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Affricate	Voiceless			Template:IPA link ~ Template:IPA link
	Voiced			Template:IPA link ~ Template:IPA link
Fricative	Voiceless		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
	Voiced	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link
Approximant				Template:IPA link ~ Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link

Template:IPAslink is found in Ewe borrowings,Template:Sfn as is Template:IPAslink, which can be seen to be distinct from (which cannot be followed by another consonant) in the loanword Template:Gloss.Template:Sfn

The language has been claimed to have doubly articulated fricatives . However, as with similar claims for Swedish Template:IPAblink, the labial articulation is not fricated, and these are actually labialized velars, .Template:Sfn All velar fricatives are quite weak, and are more often .Template:Sfn

The affricates vary between Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink and Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink, which may be a generational difference.Template:Sfn

Phonotactics

Syllables are V, CV, CGV, and N: Avatime allows consonant-approximant clusters, where the approximant may be . There is also a syllabic nasal, which takes its own tone: "many".

Any consonant but may form a cluster with : "table", "snake", "chameleon", "mucous". After a coronal consonant, the is pronounced .

When two vowels come together, they are either separated by a glottal stop , fuse into a single vowel, or the first vowel reduces to a semivowel. In the latter case, the four front vowels reduce to and three of the back vowels reduce to , but is fronted to .

However, there are /Cw/ and /Cj/ sequences which are not derived from vowel sequences. These are .

External links

• The UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive: Avatime - Phonetic fieldwork on Avatime