ИСТИНА

The vocalic system of Akebu, a poorly studied Kwa language of Togo (~70 000 speakers), is typologically unusual in two aspects. First, the ATR harmony and the presence of the interior vowels (those within the interior regions of the vowel space, including front rounded vowels, unrounded non-low back vowels, and non-low central vowels, see Rolle et al. 2017), were shown to be two mutually exclusive vowel system profiles within the Marco-Sudan Belt (Rolle et al. 2017). In a survey of 615 languages of the Macro-Sudan Belt only 24 languages (scattered sporadically from Senegal to Sudan) showed the co-occurrence of these patterns (Rolle et al. 2017: 12). Akebu, in turn, features both the ATR harmony and the following interior vowels: /ɨ, ə/. Second, in those languages which still exhibit the co-occurence of these two patterns and have several central vowels (e.g. such Eastern Kru languages as Bété, Godie, Koyo, see Marchese 1983), the latter constitute the ATR harmony pairs exactly like the front and the back vowels. In contrast, the three central vowels of Akebu can be qualified as [-ATR] and opposed only by height. This is supported by both the ATR harmony patterns and the phonetic data.