A phonetic and phonological study of the nominal piece in Adangme.

Chapter 1 provides a background of the Adangme-speaking area, reviews previous linguistic work on Adangme and defines the scope of the present study. Chapters 2 and 3 are concerned with the grammatical description of the Nominal Please the former deals with a definition of the Nominal Piece and with the word-classes of which the Nominal Place is composed; the latter describes the relevance of the Categories of Person and of Number to the Nominal Piece, Chapter 4 presents a detailed description of the vowel and consonant sounds of Adangme, The description draws as well on kinaesthetic evidence as on the following Instrumental data, all of which contribute an additional dimension to the phonetic description: palatograms, kymograms and spectrograms. The rest of the thesis (namely Chapters 5, 6 and7) describes the phonology of the Nominal Piece. Chapter 5 provides a prosodic analysis of the syllabic structure of Adangme and reviews some loanwords in Adangme. In Chapter 6 Is presented a prosodic statement on nasalization in various nominal constructions. Finally and by reference to tonograns of selected utterances. Chapter 7 deals with Pitch, Tone and Intonation in words of varying syllabic types, in certain grammatically-delimited Nominal Piece types, and in Sentences comprising a Nominal Piece and a Verbal Piece. A biblography of works quoted and of some of the works consulted appears at the end.