Scholarly Works
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://repository.ui.edu.ng/handle/123456789/347
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Item Varepsilon kú mask: Integrating Yorùbá cultural greetings into machine translation(ArXiv, 2023) Akinade, I.; Alabi, J. O.; Adelani, D.; Odoje, C.; Klakow, D.This paper investigates the performance of massively multilingual neural machine translation (NMT) systems in translating Yorùbá greetings (" kú 1), which are a big part of Yorùbá language and culture, into English. To evaluate these models, we present IkiniYorùbá, a Yorùbá-English translation dataset containing some Yorùbá greetings, and sample use cases. We analysed the performance of different multilingual NMT systems including Google Translate and NLLB and show that these models struggle to accurately translate Yorùbá greetings into English. In addition, we trained a Yorùbá-English model by finetuning an existing NMT model on the training split of IkiniYorùbá and this achieved better performance when compared to the pre-trained multilingual NMT models, although they were trained on a large volume of data.Item Womanism or Humanism: The Exploration of Pamela Smith’s Translation for Ogun Qmode(Matrix Publications Nig. Enterprises, 2024) Odoje, C.O.; Ganiyat, A.; Idris, A.Language choice in translation may be informed by many factors. Some scholars have alluded this to translator’s educational background, faithfulness to source text, their personality in the area of religious preference, condition of service and so on. The examination of the impact of gender or the sex of the translator on the language choice in the translation has not been as prominent. This paper explores the translation of Pamela Smith with the view to determining whether her gender influences her choice of words and style within the theoretical framework of natural equivalence. It was found that the language choice of the translator was full of compassion, romanticism and dynamism, which are a blend of womanism and humanism.Item Rule-Based Machine Translation: An Interface between Formal and Natural Language Syntax A Violation of Case Filter Principle(West African Linguistics Society, 2016) Odoje, C.O.The principles which govern ways words can be combined together to form phrases and sentences in natural language is known as syntax while formal syntax is not a matter of experience (unlike natural language), but stipulations in order to provide a specified set of strings in a computer programming language. The focus of this paper therefore, is to explore linguistics as the dual planes of theory and practice, by interrogating how PROLOG was used to capture English/Yoruba natural language syntax in a rule-based machine translation. The study reveals that the machine was able to generate sentences, break sentences into phrases and words in a bid to translate them in both languagesItem The Peculiar Challenges of SMT to African Languages(The Linguistic Association of Nigeria, 2013) Odoje, C.O.The challenges of Machine translation (MT) have been identified and classified but the classification did not consider the peculiarities of African languages. This paper therefore explores the challenges of MT and reclassifies them in relation with the uniqueness of African languages. The study uses the Yoruba language as a template for other African languages and identifies some of the peculiarities of African languages which include Tie fact that they are resource-scarce languages; dycritization, demarcation of discipline, and funding, amongst others. The paper recommends measures to overcome some of these challenges.Item Language: A Catalyst for National Development(Universal Akada Books, 2013) Odoje, C.O.The author looks at strategies in the teaching and learning of Nigerian languages as second languages to foster peace and development in Nigeria. He observes that the Nigerian government has put some measures in place, just that some of these measures are poorly implemented and their aims defeated. The author makes some recommendations that would help to achieve a meaningful, peaceful co-existence, which is a catalyst for development.Item Yoruba-English/English-Yoruba dictionary & phrasebook(Hippocrenc Books, Inc, 2019) Odoje, C.; Mawadza, A.Item Bilateral Audiometric and Acoustic Analysis of High Frequency Fricatives in Students with Speech Impairments(Department of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages at the University of Nigeria, 2024) Nweya, G. O.; Adiboshi, A."Some scholars assume that it is possible for people who have impaired perceptions to distort fricatives. Although this assumption has been investigated in other climes; it has attracted little or no attention in the Nigerian context. This study, therefore, investigates high frequency fricatives in students with speech impairments using bilateral audiometric and acoustic analysis with a view to determining whether speech impaired persons that cannot perceive high frequency can distort fricatives as widely assumed. The audiometry was used to test the average pure tone threshold of twelve students who gave their consents and six were purposively selected. The nature of data that was elicited contained lexical items with fricatives: Is, f, f, v, zI. It was called by the researcher for the subjects and they repeated it while their voices were recorded into Praat directly for spectrographic analysis. It was reported that speech impaired persons distorted the fricatives Is, f, f, v, zI in varying degrees. For instance, subjects A, B, and C, distorted the sound Isl as It!, in soap IS'Jup/, as top, !.Qmh..respectively. In the word sheep IflP 'I"", If I was distorted as It I and Itfl, as in: [ipu, chitem and choyon by the subjects, respectively. The findings support the claim that it is possible for people who have impaired perceptions and cannot perceive high frequencies to distort fricatives.Item The eye as source of conceptual metaphors in Igbo(Department of Igbo, African, and Asian Studies, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, 2024) Nweya, G. O.; Ejinwa, S. O."This study examines how the eye (ányá) body part in Igbo is variously conceptualized and used metaphorically to express abstract concepts. Existing works on body part metaphors in Igbo were based on the traditionalist perspectives which sees metaphor as a rhetoric or figurative device with little attention from the conceptual metaphor perspective which sees metaphor as a systematic cognitive device used in the understanding of abstract concepts through the application of concrete ones. Data for this study were collected from 20 native speakers of Igbo through oral interview and observations and subjected to semantic analysis. It was discovered that the eye (ányá) body part is a source domain or concrete concept used in mapping out or expressing abstract concepts in Igbo such as intelligence, love, hope, time/distance, greed, among others. It was further discovered that metaphor is a powerful cognitive tool that help in expressing the Igbo worldviews which comprises of their culture, belief system, core values, and morals, among others. The study therefore concluded that the Igbo language is rich in the use of metaphors in everyday conversation and in expressing and understanding the worldviews of native speakers of the language.Item "Eleven vowels of Imilike Igbo including ATR and RTR schwa "(Cambridge University Press, 2024) Akinbo, S.; Ozburn, A.; Nweya, G.; Pulleyblank, D."In this paper, we examine the acoustics of vowels in the Imilike [-m-l-ke$] dialect of Igbo (Igboid, Niger-Congo), which has not previously been done. While Standard Igbo has eight vowels, previous auditorily-based research has identified eleven vowels in Imilike. Like Standard Igbo, Imilike contrasts vowels in Advanced/Retracted Tongue Root (ATR vs. RTR). We find that there are eleven vowels, distinguished most reliably by F1, B1, energy (dB) of voiced sound below 500Hz and duration. The results of this study also suggest that RTR vowels in Imilike might involve the laryngeal constriction and movement that accompany pharyngealization. The ATR and RTR schwas have similar phonological distribution and acoustic patterns as the other ATR and RTR vowels in the language.Item The structure of Ibìbìò determiner phrase(West African Linguistic Society, 2022) Ubon, A. E.; Nweya, G. O."The Determiner Phrase (DP) is a syntactic category headed by a determiner. Its internal structure has attracted scholarly attention across languages. Although, various aspects of Ìbìbìò grammar have been examined by scholarly works, the syntax of the Determiner Phrase has not been given much attention. This study, therefore, investigates the Determiner Phrase in Ìbìbìò with a view to examining its internal constituents and hierarchical structure. Primary data for the study were elicited through interviews with the aid of the Ibadan 400-word list and syntactic checklist while secondary data were collected from existing literature. Data were analysed qualitatively based on the DP hypothesis and Chomsky’s Minimalist Program. The study identified ten determiner elements in the language. They are numbers, particularisers, as well as cardinal and ordinal numerals. Some are marked for specificity or definiteness (e.g. étó ádò) while others are marked for indefiniteness (étó kèèd). The difference between the former and the latter is definiteness and indefiniteness triggered by the determiners kèèd ‘a’ and ádò ‘the’ respectively. Other determiners identified in the language are: articles, demonstratives, quantifiers, genitives, pronouns, and bare nouns. Based on the distribution of the internal constituents of the DP, the hierarchical structure of the Ìbìbìò Determiner phrase is- DP>PartP>NumP>PossP>Num’rP>DemP>NP. The study concludes that DPs take NP complements in Ìbìbìò.