E. KwekuOsam; Charles O. Marfo; Kofi Agyekum
Description:
This paper discusses the interaction between constituent formation and alteration of sounds (i.e.,morphophonology) in Akan reduplicated verb-forms. Specifically, we strive to look into two issues; themorphology of reduplicated verb stems and how the morphological manifestation(s) affect certain target sounds.With its morphology, we observe that reduplication of the Akan verb-stem is generally total and, through theMorphological Doubling Theory (Inkelas 2005; Inkelas and Zoll 2005), reduplication of Akan verb-stems isviewed as the double (or multiple) occurrence of a morphological constituent meeting a particular morphosemanticdescription. That is to say, while there could be differences in structure between the reduplicant and thebase, they are subject to a common phonology that determines a resulting shape of an output. Withmorphophonology, we observe that three issues are relevant in the discussion of the phonology of thereduplicated verbs in Akan. These are the application of vowel harmony, vowel shift in terms of height, and therealization of tonal semblance. Through thorough discussions, the paper finally explains that reduplication ofverb-stems in Akan is morphophonologically driven.