Vowel nasality in Akan

This paper discusses vowel nasality in Akan, a Kwa language. Nasality in Akan is surface-contrastive in vowels and could be phonemic or phonetic. We show that nasal vowels contrast with oral counterparts, and also occur mainly after voiceless consonants in Akan. Moreover, there are disparities between the production and distribution of the oral-nasalnasalized vowels, which are phonologically motivated. The environments of the nasalized vowels in Akan are accounted for.