Aspects of Kusaal phonology
A. Agoswin Musah
July 2010 

In recent times, there has arisen an overbearing need to describe, analyse and document the various languages of the world. This research investigates aspects of the grammar of Kusaal – a less familiar, un-described and under-studied Mabia (Gur) language spoken in the north-eastern corner of Ghana by some 450,000 people. The study entails a description of the phonology of the language and is concerned with uncovering the underlying sounds, the syllable structures, the phonological processes and the tonal patterns inherent in Kusaal. It is cast within the generative phonological traditions especially formalised by Chomsky and Halle (1968), on Goldsmith‟s (1979, 1990) autosegmental phonology and on moraic theory. Data for the research was collected with an electronic recorder from twelve respondents on a field trip to Bawku and Zebilla. The data was then used in corroboration with other sources found in a few study materials. Native speaker intuition and the Praat acoustics software were important resources in the transcription, description and analyses of the data. The study reveals that Kusaal has twenty-four consonants, nine short vowels which have long correlates, five nasal vowels which are all [-ATR] and several sequences of vowels. The study also shows that the various syllable structures of the language are collapsible into four predominant types: the peak only, the VC, CV and the CVC. Kusaal is morphologically isolating but words can take up to four syllables of different structures and types in the language. Two phonological processes are identified in the language: assimilation and syllable structure processes. In the former, nasalisation, homorganic nasal assimilation, labialisation, palatalisation and vowel harmony are prevalent while the latter manifests in syllable deletion and truncation, aspiration, glottalisation and loanword re-syllabification. Kusaal is a register tone language which distinguishes three level tones – high, mid and low. It also distinguishes a downstepped high from an underlying high tone. The study identifies the mora as the tone bearing unit and discusses the role of tone in the morphosyntax of the language.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/002871 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	University of Ghana
keywords:	kusaal, phonology, mora, gur, less described languages, autosegmental phonology, tone, morphology, syntax
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