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- Language Family: Kwa
- Topic #1: Morphology
- Topic #2: Phonology
Morphophonology of Reduplication in Esahie
Abstract
This paper discusses some morphophonological processes related to reduplication in Esahie, a Kwa language spoken in the Western North Region of Ghana. Reduplication is a process used in many languages for generating new words. It involves the copying of a whole, or part of a word. The process, although morphological, evokes phonological changes in the output form – both segmental and suprasegmental. For Esahie, the segmental modifications include consonant mutation and voicing assimilation for reduplicated nouns, and vowel change for reduplicated verbs, while suprasegmental changes include tone polarity, tone copying or vowel change in the output. The study shows that reduplicated verbs in Esahie have a change in vowel height in the reduplicant. The effect of tone on reduplication is also demonstrated in the study as it shows that whereas the monosyllabic reduplicated verb copies only the segmental form of the base, the disyllabic verbs, as well as reduplicated nouns copy both the segmental and the tonal pattern of the base. Fundamentally, the study shows that tone copying in Esahie reduplication is indexed to syllable count.