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2 Phonology and grammar of Godié
This chapter provides a brief overview of Godié phonology §2.1, as well as those aspects of the grammar that are particularly relevant for discourse §2.2-§2.6. Among these are the pronouns §2.2,
including personal pronouns §2.2.1 and the locative pronoun -m ɔɔ ‘LOC’ §2.2.2; the determiners
§2.3, including the definite marker §2.3.1, the demonstratives §2.3.2, and the locative adverbs §2.3.3; the relative clause §2.4; the future and past tenses §2.5.1 and §2.5.2 respectively; and finally
the aspect system §2.6, including the completive aspect §2.6.1, the incompletive aspect §2.6.2, the progressive aspect §2.6.3, and the perfect aspect §2.6.4.
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2.1 Phonology
Only the most basic rules of Godié orthography are given here, but they should be sufficient for the reader to understand the glosses of the examples.
2
Godié is a tonal language with three level tones: high, mid, and low. High tone is represented in the orthography by a straight apostrophe and low tone by a hyphen - while mid tone is left
unmarked. Lexical tones are written at the beginning of a word in Godié, as shown in example 1. 1
yi high tone ‘eyes’ yi mid tone ‘come’
-yi low tone ‘know’ Tone plays an important role in Godié grammar see Gratrix 1975. In Godié orthography,
grammatical tones—unlike lexical tones illustrated in example 1 above—are generally written at the end of the word. For example, the oblique marker ‘OBL’ and the negative auxiliary ‘XNEG’ are both
realized by a floating high tone. This results in the lengthening of the preceding vowel represented by duplication, as shown in example 2a. In the case of the syllabic pronouns n ‘I’ and -n ‘you sg.’, the
addition of the high tone of the negative auxiliary results in the lengthening of the syllabic nasal, indicated by the reduplication of the letter n, as shown in 2b and 2c.
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2 a.
klää field:
OBL
‘toin the field’ b.
nn -lä tee -yi 1
S
:
XNEG DP
2yetcome:
CP
‘I haven’t come yet.’ c.
-nn -lä tee -yi 2
S
:
XNEG DP
2yetcome:
CP
‘You haven’t come yet.’
1
For a more detailed description of the grammar of Godié the reader is referred to Marchese 1986b. This practical grammar was written in French and exists only in manuscript form.
2
It may be surprising for some readers that the Godié orthography is used in the present study, rather than a phonological transcription. However, for the purpose of describing discourse features of Godié, the orthography was
deemed sufficient for the reader. This orthography is used in Godié pedagogical and other literature. Where remarks concerning the phonological structure are pertinent, these have been added in a footnote.
3
To avoid confusion with the low tone marker, morpheme breaks are not indicated by hyphens in the vernacular line of the examples. In the gloss line, they are indicated by colons.
The only exception to the general rule of writing grammatical tones at the end of the word is the low-tone sign representing completive aspect, which is written at the beginning of monosyllabic mid-
tone verbs. Thus the verb yi ‘come’ is written -yi in the completive aspect. On the other hand, with low- tone monosyllabic verbs such as the verb -sä ‘take away’, the completive floating low tone is not
represented.
For words longer than one syllable including compound words, the tone of the following syllable or syllables is predictable for a native speaker. Thus there is no need to indicate these tones in the
orthography. Tables 2.1 and 2.2 show the orthographic representation of the 13 vowel phonemes and the 24
consonant phonemes of the Godié phonological system. Table 2.1. Orthographic representation of Godié vowels
+ FRONT - FRONT
– ROUNDED +ROUNDED
+ CLOSED +ATR
i ü
u – ATR
ɩ ö
ʋ – CLOSED
+ATR e
ë o
– OPEN – ATR
ɛ ä
ɔ + OPEN
a Note that all front vowels are unrounded in Godié. Thus the feature [-ROUNDED]
is redundant for FRONT vowels.
Table 2.2. Orthographic representation of Godié consonants Labial
Alveolar Palatal
Velar Labio-
velar Labialized
velar Plosives
voiceless p
t c
k kw
voiced b
d j
g gw
Fricatives voiceless
f s
voiced v
z Sonorants
nasal m
n ny
ŋ nw
oral bh
l n y
gh w
The representation of the phoneme l by n in the orthography occurs only in the syllable structure C
1
C
2
V, where C
1
is a nasal consonant and C
2
is the phoneme l, phonetically realized as [n], e.g.,
mnö ‘inside’.
2.2 Pronouns
