A Closer Look at the Akan Relativiser

Abstract

This paper provides an alternative viewpoint on the length and tone of the relativiser in Akan. The relativiser has been analysed as a long vowel with either a high-low tone (HL) (Saah, 2010) or a mid-low tone (McCracken, 2013). However, in this paper, we posit an underlying short vowel with a low tone (L) for the relativiser. We further show that it receives a high tone (H) from an adjacent H; making it a syllable with a contour tone at the phonetic level (i.e. a ). The contour tone then affects the length of the relativiser at the phonetic level, making it slightly longer than its original length.