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INDIVIDUAL  RESEARCH REPORTS

32.

LINQUISTIC  RESEARCH

GA  AND  ADANGME

I  am principally  engaged  in a historical  study of  the  Ga and

Adangme  languages -  historical  in the  linquistic  sense.  The work
involves structural  comparison of the sound systems and grammatical
systems of the  two  languages,  with a view  toi reconstructing  features of
phonology and grammar of the  "proto"  language,  i.e.  the  hypothetical
"ancestor*1 language of which  Ga  and Adangme are  the modem  representatives.
Also  involved  is a study of the  foreign vocabulary  present 
African and European,  and its contribution  to the structure of the  languages.

,  both

The tone  systems of Ga  and Adangme are  rather different. 

In  Ga,
there  is essentially  just one distinction based on tone  -  a syllable  has high
tone or  it does not,  e.g.  b<3  'think1 but bu  'cover1. 
In Adangme,  on the
other hand,  there are  rhree~possibllities ^"high tone,  low tone,  and what
might be called mid tone,  so that at  least  in some dialects  it  is possible to
get a succession pf  three  tone  phonemes,  each of which  is higher  than the
preceding,  e . g . ^ ko  Id*we 
'he would not have sung'.  One  of the more
interesting problemsJ'oFankfnd which has not been very much studied/  is
how such a divergence might have come about.

The relationship between  Ga  and Adangme will  be more successfully

studied if  it  is defined with  reference  to their  position  in a  larger  family.
Their  relationship  to Twi and Ewe will  have to be defined.  That this can be
done seems certain.  For instance,  there are a number of  items in which Akan
/ h/  corresponds to Ga-Adangme  / f /:

Ga
ft
afu

fo

Adangme

fT
afu

fo

Akan

hia

ahu-ru

ho-ro

English
'to need'
'bubble1

'to  wash'

33.

INDIVIDUAL  RESEARCH REPORTS

There are also words in which Akan/f/  corresponds to  Ga-Adangme/f/,
e.g.

Ga 

fuu 

Adangme 

fuu 

Akan 

fuu 

English

'plenty'

But words beginning with / f/  in  Ga  and Adangme are only cognate  in Ewe
with words that also begin with  / f /.

The typical  Ga  or Adangme syllable  consists of a consonant  plus a

vowel,  and so most simple words,  including all  verb stems, begin with a
consonant.  However,  there are quite  a number of nouns,  and some
adjectives,  that  begin with a vowel. 
can have a grammatical  function,  namely  to  indicate  number. 
distantly  related group of  languages,  the'so-called  Togo Remnant languages,
initial  vowels are  involved  in a system of noun-class concords,  comparable
to the systems found in the  Bantu  languages. 
It  is likely,  then,  that the
function-less  initial  vowels  in  Ga  and Adangme are the  last vestiges of a
complicated noun-class system.  The actual  correspondences  involved
remain to be worked out.

In Akan,  initial  vowels  in nominals
In a more

A  comparative  Ga-Adangme-Ewe  vocabulary  is being set up,

uniform with  the vocabularies drawn up by Dr.  Stewart  for Twi and Guang
languages.  These vocabularies are being  included  in the  Institute's series
of Comparative West African vocabularies.

M.E.Kropp

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