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- Title
Negative morpheme markers in Nsukka-ḷdeke dialect of Igbo.
- Authors
Ezebuilo, Comfort Nwuka; Eze, Augustina Ngozi; Achadu, Ada Peter; Obitube, Kelvinfrancis Olisaemeka
- Abstract
This paper examines negative morphemes in Nsukka-ḷdẹkẹ dialect of Igbo language, with a view to highlighting the significant characteristics of negation in the dialect. Hence, the study shall investigate the basic characteristics of negative morphemes in Nsukka-ḷdẹkẹ dialect of Igbo with a particular focus on the selectional restriction observed in their distribution. Within its scope, therefore, the study provides a more comprehensive and insightful grammatical description of the Nsukka-ḷdẹkẹ dialect’s negative morpheme markers. It adopts the survey method and descriptive design as methodologies. The data for the study were drawn from primary sources through informal oral interviews and introspection because, the researchers are native speakers of the dialect. The findings reveal that Nsukka-ḷdẹkẹ dialect employs four different morphemes in marking negation: the widest distributed negative suffix “-gu”, the past negative suffix “-dígu”, the negative perfective suffix “-legu”, and the negative imperative suffix, “-le.” The negative morphemes, -gu, -digu and –legu are realised as “–gǝ”, “-dǝgǝ” and “lẹgǝ” respectively in the dialect. The variants are the allomorphs of –gu, -digu and –legu. The study observes that the past negative suffix (-digu) is hosted only by the root verbs and never used with auxiliary verbs. Similarly, the negative perfective suffix, “-legu” is also hosted by the verb root and could be attached to the auxiliary verbs in the dialect, particularly when responding to question(s) negatively. The study also discovered that the negative imperative mood suffix, “-le” is phonologically conditioned as opposed to what is obtainable in Standard Igbo, where the negative imperative mood suffix, “-la” is invariant, irrespective of the Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) pattern of the vowel in the verb where it is hosted. The above observations infer that the dialect under consideration has a genius of its own, which any analyst could approach in his/her analysis with no presuppositions from the knowledge of Standard Igbo.
- Subjects
DIALECTS; MORPHEMICS; NATIVE language; RESEARCH personnel; PSEUDOMORPHS
- Publication
IKENGA: International Journal of Institute of African Studies, 2024, Vol 25, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
2006-4241
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.53836/ijia/2024/25/1/010