Scholarly Works
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://repository.ui.edu.ng/handle/123456789/347
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Item Articulated structure of the Igbo tense phrase domain(West African Linguistic Society, 2021) Nweya, G. O."The tense phrase (TP) domain is the domain that expresses grammatical tense, aspect and mood. Existing studies concentrated on describing the morph-syntactic features of the Igbo TP categories with little attention paid to their interaction and hierarchical order. This study, therefore, investigates the morpho-syntactic features and interaction of the functors with a view to determining their hierarchical order in the clause structure. Primary and secondary data were collected and subjected to syntactic analysis. Three main functors, Tense, Aspect and Negation, overtly occur in the Igbo TP area as verbal affixes and they exhibit two opposing patterns of morpheme order: V-T-ASP-NEG and T-ASP-NEG-V. The former, where the functors follow the verb, requires obligatory movement of the VP to spec TP, while the latter requires no such movement since the functors precede the verb. The study demonstrated that these morpheme orders are derived syntactically via operation merge with surface order corresponding to the hierarchical order. This is in contrast to preceding studies which assume mirror image where the linear order is the inverse of the hierarchical order.Item Negation in Nupe(University of Benin, 2019) Nweya, G. O.; Adedigba, J. O.Negation as a syntactic process has attracted tremendous attention cross linguistically. However. existing studies on the morpho-syntax of Nupe has concentrated on the study of the tense, aspect and the internal s t ru c tu re of th e verb phrase with little attention paid to negation. This study is, therefore, investigates negative constructions in Nupe with a view to identifying the negative markers and their distribution. as well as the scope of negation and its interaction with tense and aspect. Primary 'data were elicited using Ibadan Syntactic Paradigm, Focus Group Discussion and In-Depth-Interview while secondary data w e re collected from existing literature. The data were subjected to interlinear glossing and syntactic analysis. Two negative markers were identified: the negative particle a, and the negative circumfix ga-mɔ .. The negative particle a has the widest distribution and it is used in deriving various sentence types while ‘ga-m5’ is used only in negative imperatives. The negative marker a occurs sentence final in all instances of its occurrence. Using the syntactic and semantic processes of cleft focus and paraphrasing, the study distinguished between constituent and sentential negation. With regard to the interaction of tense/aspect and negation. It was observed that tense and aspect morphemes do not co-occur but either of them co-occurs with negative morphemes in the same construction. While the tense or aspect marker occurs pre-verbal, the negative morpheme occurs clause final.Item Sentential Negation in the Imilike Dialect of Igbo(University of Ibadan, 2015) Nweya, G. O.; Solomon-Etefia, P. O.In spite of the fact that negation is a universal principle of human language, the process of negation and negative markers tends to be distinct across languages and dialects. This descriptive study therefore examines the process of achieving sentential negation in the Imilike dialect of the Igbo language. Its specific objectives are to identifying negative markers and negative polarity items; and show how negators interact with other functors in the dialect. Data for the study were collected from native speakers through oral interview and observation. Analysis is based on the verb forms identified in the dialect in relation to their affirmative counterparts. The results show that negative markers in the dialect are - ga/-g~ and -le/-If! which are suffixes. The former is used in the indicative, progressive and future tense/aspectual forms, while the latter is employed in imperative constructions. Tense/aspect markers such as the past, the perfective, the progressive and the future have negative forms which cooccur with the main negator in negative constructions. The study shows the rich inflectional and phonological properties of the dialect such as affix sequencing and vowel harmony. The study concludes that the process of negation and negative markers in Imilike Igbo is noticeably distinct from those of standard lgbo.