Avatime language

Avatime
Sia (Siyase)
Native to	Ghana
Region	Volta Region
Ethnicity	Avatime
Native speakers	24,000 (2003)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Kwa Ka-Togo Avatime–Nyangbo Avatime
Language codes
ISO 639-3	avn
Glottolog	avat1244[2]

Avatime
People	Ke-dane-ma
Language	Sì-yà

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, Biakpe, 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 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	m		n	ɲ	ŋ	ŋʷ
Plosive	p b		t d		k ɡ	k͡p ɡ͡b
Affricate			t͡s d͡z ~ t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
Fricative	β	f v	s z		x ɣ	xʷ ɣʷ
Approximant			l ~ r	j		w

/ɸ/ is found in Ewe borrowings, as is /kʷ/, which can be seen to be distinct from /kw/ (which cannot be followed by another consonant) in the loanword /àkʷlɛ̄/ "boat".

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/. All velar fricatives are quite weak, and are closer to [h ɦ hʷ ɦʷ].

The affricates vary between [t͡s], [d͡z] and [t͡ʃ], [d͡ʒ], which may be a generational difference.

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

1. Since the IPA does not have distinct letters for ±ATR vowels, they are transcribed here as differing in height for legibility.
2. Tone not marked. Other prefixes vary as /ɛ ~ e/

References

1. Avatime at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Avatime". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

• Maddieson, Ian (October 1995). "Collapsing vowel harmony and doubly-articulated fricatives: two myths about the phonology of Avatime". Fieldwork Studies of Targeted Languages III. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics. 91: 67–84.
• Schuh, Russel (1995). "Aspects of Avatime phonology". Studies in African Linguistics. 24 (1): 31–67.