Chakali language

Chakali
Region	Ghana
Native speakers	6,000 (2003)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Gur Southern Gurunsi Western Chakali; ; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cli
Glottolog	chak1271
ELP	Chakali[2]

Chakali is a Gur language of Ghana, spoken in several villages in the Wa East District of the Upper West Region. The majority of Chakali are bilingual in Wali.[3]

Phonology

Chakali phonology is typical of Gur languages, with tone, vowel harmony, and labial–velar consonant

Vowels

Chakali contrasts long and short vowels, as well as advanced and retracted tongue root vowels, which play a role in vowel harmony. While typically treated as a "neutral" vowel for tongue root harmony, /a/ might surface as [ɑ] following -ATR vowels, but this is not phonemic. Additionally, [ə] arises during epenthesis or vowel reduction.

	Front		Back
	Unrounded		Rounded
	−ATR	+ATR	−ATR	+ATR
Close	ɪ	i	ʊ	u
Mid	ɛ	e	ɔ	o
Open	a

All phonemic vowels can also appear nasalized, which is often due to the influence of a neighboring nasal consonant or glottal fricative. Nasal vowels do occur phonemically in certain words,[3] as demonstrated by near-minimal or minimal pairs:

/zʊ̀ʊ̀/ 'enter', /zʊ̃̀ʊ̃̀/ 'laziness'
/fáà/ 'ancient', /fã̀ã̀/ 'do by force'
/tùù/ 'go down', /tṹṹ/ 'honey'

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar/ Palatal	Velar		Glottal
	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar/ Palatal	plain	labial	Glottal
Nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ	ŋ͡m
Stop	p b	t d	t͡ʃ d͡ʒ	k ɡ	k͡p ɡ͡b	ʔ
Fricative	f v	s z				h
Approximant		l	j		w
Rhotic		r~ɾ

/t/ surfaces as [r] in word-final or word-medial onset position.[3]
/k/ and /g/ usually surface as [ɣ] between vowels.[3]
All nasals are realized as [ŋ] in word-final position.[3]

Grammar

Chakali is a subject–verb–object language.

References

Chakali at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Endangered Languages Project data for Chakali.
Brindle, Jonathan A. (2017). A Dictionary and Grammatical Outline of Chakali. African Language Grammars and Dictionaries 2. Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.5281/zenodo.344813. ISBN 978-3-944675-91-6.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

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[e18-1] Chakali at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)

[ELP1-2] Endangered Languages Project data for Chakali.

[brindle-3] Brindle, Jonathan A. (2017). A Dictionary and Grammatical Outline of Chakali. African Language Grammars and Dictionaries 2. Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.5281/zenodo.344813. ISBN 978-3-944675-91-6.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)