Dagbani language

Dagbani language
Dagbani
Dagbane
Spoken in Ghana
Ethnicity Dagomba people
Native speakers 800,000  (2004)
Language family
Niger–Congo
  • Atlantic–Congo
Writing system Latin alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3 dag

Dagbani is a Gur language spoken in Ghana. Its native speakers are primarily of the Dagomba people, but Dagbani is also widely known as a first language in northern Ghana.

Contents

Phonology

Vowels

Dagbani has eleven phonemic vowels: six short and five long vowels:

Front Central Back
High i ɨ u
Mid e o
Low a
Front Central Back
High
Mid
Low

Olawsky (1999) has the schwa in place of /ɨ/, unlike other researchers on the language who use the more articulatorily higher /ɨ/. Allophonic variation based on tongue-root advancement is well attested for 4 of these vowels: [i] ~ [ɪ], [e] ~ [ɛ], [u] ~ [ʊ] and [o] ~ [ɔ].

Consonants

Bilabial Labiodental Alveolar Palatal Velar Labial-velar
Stop Voiceless p t k k͡p
Voiced b d ɡ ɡ͡b
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ ŋ͡m
Fricative Voiceless f s
Voiced v z
Lateral l
Approximant ʋ j

Tone

Dagbani is a tonal language in which pitch is used to distinguish words, as in gballi [ɡbálːɪ́] (High-High) 'grave' vs. gballi [ɡbálːɪ̀] (High-Low) 'zana mat'.[1] The tone system of Dagbani is characterized by two level tones and downstep (a lowering effect occurring between sequences of the same phonemic tone).

Writing system

Dagbani is written in an extended version of the Latin alphabet, but the literacy rate is only 2–3%. The orthography currently used represents a number of allophonic distinctions; tone is not marked.

Alphabet

a b ch d dz e ɛ f g gb ɣ h i j k kp l m n ny ŋ o ɔ p r s sh t u w y z ʒ

Grammar

Dagbani is agglutinative, but with some fusion of affixes. The constituent order in Dagbani sentences is usually agent–verb–object.

References

  1. ^ Olawsky 1997
  • Blench, Roger (2006) 'Dagbani plant names' (unpublished circulation draft)
  • Olawsky, Knut J. (1999). Aspects of Dagbani grammar, with special emphasis on phonology and morphology. München: LINCOM Europa. 
  • Olawsky, Knut J. (2003). "What is a word in Dagbani?". In R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Word: A Cross-Linguistic Typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 205–226. 
  • Olawsky, Knut (1997) 'Interaction of tone and morphology in Dagbani' (unpublished)

External links


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