Hypotheses on the Diachronic Development of the Akan Language Group1

Abstract

There is controversy over the use of the term Akan by reason of the fact that it has both linguistic and ethnographic semantic readings. Not all the Akan people speak the Akan language and not all those who speak Akan as mother tongue can be technically classified as Akan people since some of their cultural practices deviate from that which sets the Akan people apart from other ethnic groups in Ghana and the West African sub-region in general. Hence, we begin this paper by telling between the ethnographic Akan and linguistic Akan in the cause of educating the target readership about who the speakers of the Akan language are and/or are not. We also establish seven vowels as constituents of the * Proto-Akan vocalic inventory. This study is mainly based on evidence from the Akan synchronic phonology in respect of selected varieties of that language group which unquestionably represent all the varieties of the language group including those that are not mentioned in this study. We have asserted that *Proto-Akan had thirteen consonants in its segmental catalogue and also provided pieces of evidence from both synchronic Akan and English lexemes borrowed into the Akan Language Group to give credence to our hypothesis that all consonants apart from the 13 * proto ones developed into the language group through miscellaneous phonological processes. All analytical discussions in this paper have been done within the theories of comparative method and internal reconstruction.