- Dagbani language
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Dagbani Dagbane Spoken in Ghana Ethnicity Dagomba people Native speakers 800,000 (2004) Language family Writing system Latin alphabet Language codes ISO 639-3 dag This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. 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 iː uː Mid eː oː Low aː 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
- ^ 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- Blench, Roger (2006) 'Dagbani plant names' (unpublished circulation draft)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- Olawsky, Knut (1997) 'Interaction of tone and morphology in Dagbani' (unpublished)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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