Editing Gbe languages (section)

==Phonology==

===Consonants===
The following phonetic segments are attested in Gbe languages:

{| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center
|-
|+Gbe languages consonants phonetic inventory (Capo 1991:39)
!colspan=2 rowspan=2|
!rowspan=2| [[Labial consonant|Labial]]
!rowspan=2| [[Labiodental consonant|Labio-<br />dental]]
!rowspan=2| [[Laminal consonant|Lamino]]<br />-[[Interdental consonant|interdental]]
!rowspan=2| Lamino-<br />[[Alveolar consonant|alveolar]]
!rowspan=2| [[Apical consonant|Apico]]-<br />[[Postalveolar consonant|post-alveolar]]
!rowspan=2| [[Alveolo-palatal consonant|Alveolo<br />-palatal]]
!colspan=2| [[Palatal consonant|Palatal]]
!colspan=2| [[Velar consonant|Velar]]
!colspan=2| [[Uvular consonant|Uvular]]
|-
! <small>plain</small>
! <small>[[Labialization|lab.]]</small>
! <small>plain</small>
! <small>[[Labial–velar consonant|lab.]]</small>
! <small>plain</small>
! <small>lab.</small>
|-
!colspan=2| [[Nasal consonant|Nasal]]
| {{IPAlink|m}}
| ||
| {{IPAlink|n}}
| ||
| {{IPAlink|ɲ}}
|
| {{IPAlink|ŋ}}
| ŋ<sup>w</sup>
| ||
|-
! rowspan=2| [[Stop consonant|Plosive]] /<br />[[Affricate consonant|Affricate]]
! <small>[[Voicelessness|voiceless]]</small>
| {{IPAlink|p}}
|
| {{IPAlink|t̪|t}}
| {{IPAlink|ts}}
| 
| {{IPAlink|tʃ}}
| 
| 
| {{IPAlink|k}}
| {{IPAlink|k͡p}}
| 
| 
|-
! <small>[[Voice (phonetics)|voiced]]</small>
| {{IPAlink|b}}
|
| {{IPAlink|d̪|d}}
| {{IPAlink|dz}}
| {{IPAlink|ɖ}}
| {{IPAlink|dʒ}}
| 
| 
| {{IPAlink|ɡ}}
| {{IPAlink|ɡ͡b}}
| 
| 
|-
! rowspan=2| [[Fricative consonant|Fricative]]
! <small>voiceless</small>
| {{IPAlink|ɸ}}
| {{IPAlink|f}}
|
| {{IPAlink|s}}
|
| {{IPAlink|ʃ}}
| || || ||
| {{IPAlink|χ}}
| χ<sup>w</sup>
|-
! <small>voiced</small>
| {{IPAlink|β}}
| {{IPAlink|v}}
|
| {{IPAlink|z}}
|
| {{IPAlink|ʒ}}
| || || ||
| {{IPAlink|ʁ}}
| ʁ<sup>w</sup>
|-
!rowspan=2| [[Trill consonant|Trill]]
! <small>plain</small>
| || || ||
| {{IPAlink|r}}
| || || || || || ||
|-
! <small>[[Nasalization|nasalized]]</small>
| || || ||
| r̃
| || || || || || ||
|-
!rowspan=2| [[Approximant consonant|Approximant]]
! <small>plain</small>
| || || ||
| {{IPAlink|l}}
|
| {{IPAlink|j}}
| {{IPAlink|ɥ}}
| {{IPAlink|ɰ}}
| {{IPAlink|w}}
| ||
|-
! <small>nasalized</small>
| || || ||
| l̃
|
| j̃
| ɥ̃
|
| w̃
| ||
|}
''Notes''
*The apico-[[postalveolar consonant]]s are generally written and transcribed with the symbols for the corresponding alveolar consonants, except for the voiced stop, which uses the symbol for the voiced retroflex stop {{IPA|[ɖ]}}. This is only to distinguish it from the lamino-dental voiced stop, and is not to be interpreted as the consonant being [[Subapical consonant|subapical]].
*The above table lists the attested ''phonetic'' segments. Some of the sounds listed here are in [[free variation]] with other sounds (e.g. '''r''' and '''r̃''' with '''l''' and '''l̃'''). The reader is referred to the individual languages for an overview of their phoneme inventory.

No Gbe language exhibits all of the above forty-two phonetic segments. According to Capo (1991), all of them have the following twenty-three consonants in common: '''b, m, t, d, ɖ, n, k, g, kp, gb, ɲ, f, v, s, z, χ, ʁ, r, r̃, l, l̃, y, w'''.

===Vowels===
The following vowels are found in Gbe languages:

{| class="wikitable" 
|+ <small>Phonetic inventory of vowels in Gbe languages</small>
!<small>Capo 1991:24</small>!![[Front vowel|Front]]!![[Central vowel|Central]]!![[Back vowel|Back]]
|-
| style="text-align: right;"|[[Close vowel|Close]]||{{IPA link|i}}•{{IPA link|ĩ}}|| ||{{IPA link|u}}•{{IPA link|ũ}}
|-
| style="text-align: right;"|[[Close-mid vowel|Close-mid]]||{{IPA link|e}}•{{IPA link|ẽ}}|| ||{{IPA link|o}}•{{IPA link|õ}}
|-
| || ||{{IPA link|ə}}•{{IPA link|ə̃}}||
|-
| style="text-align: right;"|[[Open-mid vowel|Open-mid]]||{{IPA link|ɛ}}•{{IPA link|ɛ̃}}|| ||{{IPA link|ɔ}}•{{IPA link|ɔ̃}}
|-
| style="text-align: right;"|[[Open vowel|Open]]|| ||{{IPA link|a}}•{{IPA link|ã}}||
|}

In general, each Gbe variety makes use of a subset of twelve vowels, seven [[Oral vowel|oral]] and five [[Nasal vowel|nasalised]]. The vowels {{IPA|/i ĩ u ũ e o ɛ̃ ɔ ɔ̃ a ã/}} are attested in all Gbe languages.

Nasalization plays an important role in the vowel inventory: every vowel in the Gbe languages occurs in a non-nasalized and a nasalized form. Capo (1991) observes that the degree of nasality of nasal vowels is less when they occur after nasal consonants than after non-nasal ones.

===Nasalization in Gbe===
Capo (1981) has argued that nasalization in Gbe languages should be analyzed phonemically as a feature relevant to vowels and not to consonants.<ref>Cf. Capo (1981).</ref> This means that nasal vowels are distinct from oral vowels, while nasal and voiced oral stops are treated as predictable variants. For example, non-syllabic nasal consonants are always followed by a nasal vowel, and syllabic nasal consonants are analyzed as reduced forms of consonant–vowel syllables. This analysis is in line with reconstructions of the [[Protolanguage|proto]]-[[Volta–Congo languages|Volta–Congo]] language, for which similar proposals have been made.<ref>Cf. Stewart, John (1985) 'Nasality patterns in the Volta–Congo foot.' Paper presented at the Colloquium on African Linguistics, Leiden, Sept. 1985.</ref>

===Tone===
The Gbe languages are [[Tone (linguistics)|tonal language]]s. In general, they have three tone levels, High (H), Mid (M), and Low (L), of which the lower two are not phonemically contrastive. Thus, the basic tonemes of Gbe are 'High' and 'Non-High', where the High toneme may be realised as High or Rising and the Non-High toneme may be realised as Low or Mid. The tones of Gbe [[noun]]s are often affected by the [[consonant]] of the noun stem. The [[phonation|voicing]] of this consonant affects the realisation of the Non-High toneme roughly as follows: If the consonant is a voiced [[obstruent]], the Non-High toneme is realised as Low (è-ḏà 'snake') and if the consonant is a voiceless obstruent or a [[sonorant]], the Non-High toneme is realised as Mid (ām̲ē 'person', à-f̱ī 'mouse'). The consonants that induce tonal alternations in this way are sometimes called [[depressor consonant]]s.

===Morphology===
The basic [[syllable]] form of Gbe languages is commonly rendered (C<sub>1</sub>)(C<sub>2</sub>)V(C<sub>3</sub>), meaning that there at least has to be a nucleus V, and that there are various possible configurations of consonants (C<sub>1-3</sub>). The V position may be filled by any of the vowels or by a syllabic nasal. It is also the location of the tone. While virtually any consonant can occur in the C<sub>1</sub>  position, there exist several restrictions on the kind of consonants that can occur in the C<sub>2</sub>  and C<sub>3</sub>  positions. In general, only [[liquid consonants]] may occur as C<sub>2</sub> , while only nasals occur in the C<sub>3</sub> position.

Most [[verb]]s in Gbe languages have one of the basic syllable forms. Gbe [[noun|nominals]] are generally preceded by a nominal prefix consisting of a vowel (cf. the Ewe word ''{{IPA|aɖú}}'', 'tooth'). The quality of this vowel is restricted to the subset of non-nasal vowels. In some cases the nominal prefix is reduced to [[schwa]] or lost: the word for 'fire' is ''izo'' in Phelá, ''{{IPA|ədʒo}}'' in Wací-Ewe and ''{{IPA|dʒo}}'' in Pecí-Ewe. The nominal prefix can be seen as a relic of a typical Niger–Congo [[noun class]] system.

The Gbe languages are [[isolating language]]s, and as such express many semantic features by lexical items. Of a more [[agglutinative language|agglutinative]] nature are the commonly used [[periphrasis|periphrastic]] constructions. In contrast to [[Bantu languages]], a major branch of the Niger–Congo language family, Gbe languages have very little inflectional morphology. There is for example no subject–verb [[agreement (linguistics)|agreement]] whatsoever in Gbe, no [[gender (linguistics)|gender]] agreement, and no inflection of nouns for number. The Gbe languages make extensive use of a rich system of tense/aspect markers.

[[Reduplication]] is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated. The Gbe languages, like most [[Kwa languages]], make extensive use of reduplication in the formation of new words, especially in deriving nouns, adjectives and adverbs from verbs. Thus in Ewe, the verb ''lã́'', 'to cut', is nominalised by reduplication, yielding ''lãlã́'', 'the act of cutting'. Triplication is used to intensify the meaning of adjectives and adverbs, e.g. Ewe ''ko'' 'only' → ''kokooko'' 'only, only, only'.