Some Question of Ginyanga Phonology and Phonetics

This paper presents various aspects of phonetics and phonology of the Ginyanga language. Ginyanga (glottocode: giny1241, ISO: 639-3) is a poorly described Tano-Guang language, which belongs to the Kwa family. It is spoken by a population of 16500 people in Central Togo (Prefecture of Blitta) and north of Volta Region in Ghana (based on Ethnologue data). The aim of the paper is to provide some evidence to a vowel inventory of Ginyanga and instrumental analysis of several vowel aspects. The paper includes an instrumental study of various acoustic features of the vowels. The material of the study includes the data from five males which are native speakers of Ginyanga. The data were collected in field trips to the village of Agbandi in the prefecture of Blitta, Togo, in January-February 2019 and January-February 2020. The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 provides important information on the Ginyanga language and phonological background of this study. Section 2 examines methods and data which were used in the paper. Section 3 tackles an issue of status of vowel /ə/ as a segment in Ginyanga vowel system. Section 4 provides a study of the influence of the right and left context on vowels. General results and plans for further research are discussed in Section 5. In this paper was presented several aspects of instrumental analysis of vowel system of the Ginyanga language. The first result of this research is a removal schwa as a separate segment from the vowel system. Schwa is an allophone of vowels /i/ and /ɩ/ which occurs in several CVC positions: before lateral, before and after fricatives, before labials. Secondly, the instrumental analysis of vowels has shown that the height of the vowel influences at centralization in CVC context. Close and mid vowels (/i/, /ɩ/, /e/, /o/, /ʋ/ and /u/) in CVC context tend to be realized more centrally while mid-open (/ɔ/, /ɛ/) and open (/a/) vowels do not have this pattern in the same degree. Moreover, CVC position affects the F2 of front vowels more than F2 of open and back. Moreover, I considered the influence of the left and the right contexts on vowels’ realization. First of all, vowels with labials and labiovelars in the right context are realized more central (front vowels have lower F2 values while back vowels have higher F2 values; close vowels have higher F1 values while open have lower F1 values) than vowels with other right contexts. The only exception is front vowels before labiovelars. Moreover, open vowels in CV position after labiovelars have the highest F1 values. Vowels with palatals in the left or the right context have the lowest F1 and the highest F2 values. Vowels with fricatives, dental thrill, dental lateral, labials and labiovelars Further research of Ginyanga phonetics and phonology could include following aspects: more detail research of coarticulation, which will include data from all vowel, not only 40% in the middle of the sound; instrumental study of [+- ATR] features; study of vowel nasalisation; detail research of consonant system; study of alternations; description of Ginyanga tonology