Gokana has been argued to lack syllables, a radical claim because syllables are traditionally considered to be universal. According to Hyman (1983), Gokana "does not organise its consonants and vowels into syllables." Hyman later amended his claim to say that "the syllable plays at best a minor role in the prosodic organisation of Gokana" and is perhaps not activated to express any generalisations in the language.[2]
Writing system
Gokana alphabet
Uppercase letters
A
B
D
E
Ẹ
F
G
Gb
Gy
I
K
Kp
Ky
L
M
N
Ng
Nv
Ny
O
Ọ
P
S
T
V
Z
Lowercase letters
a
b
d
e
ẹ
f
g
gb
gy
i
k
kp
ky
l
m
n
ng
nv
ny
o
ọ
p
s
t
v
z
Nasal vowels are indicated by a tilde and tones are indicated by an acute or grave accent:
The high tone is indicated by an acute accent : á, ã́, é, ẹ́, ẽ́, í, ĩ́, ó, ọ́, ṍ, ú, ṹ, ḿ ;
The low tone is indicated by a grave accent : à, ã̀, è, ẹ̀, ẽ̀, ì, ĩ̀, ò, ọ̀, õ̀, ù, ũ̀, m̀ ;
Brosnahan, L. F. (1967) "A Word List of the Gokana Dialect of Ogoni" Journal of West African Languages 4(2): pp. 43–52
Hyman, Larry M. and Comrie, B. (1981) "Logophoric Reference in Gokana" Journal of African Languages and Linguistics (Leiden) 3(1): pp. 19–37
Hyman, Larry M. (1982) "The representation of nasality in Gokana" In Hulst, Harry, van der and Smith, Norval (eds.) (1982) The Structure of Phonological Representations part, 1 Foris Publishing, Dordrecht, Holland, ISBN90-70176-53-X
Bond, Oliver and Anderson, Gregory D. S. (2005) "Divergent Structure in Ogonoid Languages" In (2005) Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistic Society Volume 31, Berkeley Linguistic Society, Berkeley, California
