Open AccessVowel harmony in Akan a consideration of Stewarts word structure conditions
Author(s) -
George N. Clements
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
studies in african linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.178
H-Index - 4
eISSN - 2154-428X
pISSN - 0039-3533
DOI - 10.32473/sal.v15i3.107510
Subject(s) - vowel harmony , phonotactics , linguistics , vowel , unitary state , harmony (color) , word (group theory) , computer science , mathematics , phonology , philosophy , political science , art , law , visual arts
Stewart [1983] presents a new framework for the analysis of Akan vowel harmony in which Word Structure Conditions (WSCs) are introduced to account for word-level phonotactic regularities. It is shown here that the WSCs, rather than simplifying the analysis of Akan, impose unnecessary complexity on it, requiring us to restate the unitary process of vowel harmony as a number of formally unrelated rules. It is concluded that with one further modification, the analysis of Clements [1981] can be maintained.