Ghana Togo Mountain languages
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The Ghana Togo Mountain languages, formerly called Togorestsprachen (Togo Remnant languages) and Central Togo languages, form a group of about fourteen languages spoken in the mountains of the Ghana-Togo borderland. They are part of the Kwa subgrouping of the Volta-Congo branch of Niger-Congo.
Westermann first identified the boundaries of this grouping, which he called Togorestsprachen, in his early twentieth century classification of the then Sudanic languages. Bernd Heine (1968) carried out comparative research among the group. Dakubu and Ford (1988) renamed this cluster the Central Togo languages, a term still used by some (e.g. Blench 2001); since the mid-90s, the term Ghana Togo Mountain languages has come into common use.
A much noted characteristic of these languages is their typical Niger-Congo noun class system, since in many surrounding languages only remnants of such a system are found. All Ghana Togo Mountain languages are tonal and most have a nine or ten vowel system employing ATR vowel harmony. Both Ewe and Twi, the dominant regional languages, have exerted considerable influence on many GTM languages.
See also
References
- Blench, Roger (2001). Comparative Central Togo: What have we learnt since Heine? (paper presented at the 32nd Annual Conference on African Linguistics and subsequently revised), 39p.
- Heine, Bernd (1968) Die Verbreitung und Gliedering der Togorestsprachen (Kölner Beiträge zur Afrikanistik vol. 1). Köln: Druckerei Wienand. [pp. 29–30, 100–101]
- Kropp Dakubu, M.E. & K.C. Ford (1988) 'The Central Togo Languages'. In: The Languages of Ghana, M.E. Kropp-Dakubu (ed.), 119–153. London: Kegan Paul International.
External links
- [The Southern Ghana-Togo Mountain Groups: A description of their languages and cultural heritage.] (CNWS research project).
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