Ebele Uba - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Ebele Uba

Awka Journal Of Linguistics And Languages , 2022

Proverb is a concept of deep thought, an insightful traditional saying that expresses a perceived... more Proverb is a concept of deep thought, an insightful traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience which could be metaphorical and use formulaic language. This paper focuses on proverb use in insecurity and conflict resolution in Igbo. In other words, it aims at selecting the Igbo proverbs that relate to insecurity and also those ones which could be used to resolve conflict. The study uses elicitation as the primary source of data, while the secondary source is book compilations of proverbs. This paper adopts Searle's (1975) speech act theory whose illocutionary classifications include; assertives, commissives, expressive, declarations and directives for its analysis. Observation was made that certain Igbo proverbs are primarily used as signals towards insecurity; example, 'mkpume rịgoro elu, egwu atụwa ite mmiri' which is used to predict the state of insecurity at an aforeplanned action. Furthermore, 'Agwọ nọ n'akịrịka', is a general proverb used for insecurity or danger. On the other hand, proverbs for conflict resolution include; 'Nwa mmadụ emegbule nwa mmụọ, ma nwa mmụọ emegbule nwa mmadụ' which is a call for fair justice among all, 'mmadụ anaghị ekwo otu ọkọ siri kọọ ya kọhịa ahụ' which is a proverb that encourages tolerance. Conclusively, it could be said that Igbo proverbs play a vital role in security alert and conflict resolution.

Nigerian Journal of Arts and Humanities (NJAH), 2023

The study compared and contrasted the sound systems of the Nyifon and Esan languages. Its goals w... more The study compared and contrasted the sound systems of the Nyifon and Esan languages. Its goals were to determine the similarities and differences between the languages' segmental phonemes and to use this information to predict teaching and learning difficulties among teachers and learners of the languages. The paper used a descriptive approach, gathering pertinent data on phonology in both languages from primary and secondary sources and analyzing it using the Contrastive Analysis (CA) theoretical framework before drawing predictions from the findings. Findings revealed that the languages' sound systems have similarities and variances, with Esan having some sounds that Nyifon does not. For instance, the vowels / ɪ, ʊ/ are absent in Esan, but the nasal vowels / ĩ, ɛ, ã, ɔ, ũ / are lacking in Nyifon. According to the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, differences in the sound systems of the two languages may provide learning challenges for learners of either language, although similarities may make learning easier.

International Journal of Current Research in the Humanities

International Journal of Current Research in the Humanities (IJCRH), 2022

In the quest to solve human communication problems, the need to learn a foreign language arises, ... more In the quest to solve human communication problems, the need to learn a foreign language arises, and this usually occurs in a multilingual setting. In the process of this learning, some challenges occur, especially the phonological phenomenon of interference. Given this challenge, the paper contributes to scholarly works on language learning by exploring the articulation of English fricatives by selected [ethnic] students of the Federal University Lokoja (FUL), Lokoja, Nigeria. The researchers carefully selected some participants from the Ebira, Igala and Okun-Yoruba ethnic groups, which form the majority of ethnicities in the university community. A total of 60 students were selected for this study; 20 each from the 3 major ethnic groups in FUL. The major instrument used for this research is the Read Aloud Method, containing nine carefully structured sentences each containing a target English fricative sound. The selected test items were read aloud by the participants and subjected to both perceptual and acoustic analyses. The acoustic analysis was done using the speech analyzer PRAAT. Audio-Articulation Model developed by Mehmet Demirezen was used as the framework for this study. The of the participants as they were unable to properly articulate some fricatives in some cases. Also, the study found that there is an overlapping peculiar to the different speakers representing each ethnic group. It can be concluded that since ethnic groups have their distinct languages, it is a factor in the inability of speakers to properly produce fricative sounds. This absence of the fricatives in the L1 shows up in the production of the L2.

Journal of the Linguistic Association of Nigeria, 2022

Many aspects of Nigerian languages, especially the cultural aspect, are in the verge of death and... more Many aspects of Nigerian languages, especially the cultural aspect, are in the verge of death and
extinction due to advent of civilization. Such cultural heritages like dirge songs, lullaby, birth songs, folktales etc. are becoming unpopular and being dropped by the contemporary generation, claiming to be in the jet age. Due to this trend, most of our natural ways of doing things are no longer transcended to the younger generation, and if such things are not adequately documented, there would be nothing to show that they existed in our language and culture. This study therefore, sets out to document an aspect of Mbaise culture -the birth songs which are currently overtaken by contemporary songs. The data for this study were gathered and recorded directly from the village women at different places where new babies were born in Mbaise town. The method of data collection was through participant observation by audio
recording of these birth songs as they were being performed at different homes in the villages. The data is analyzed with simple descriptive method. Each of the songs was transcribed phonologically and translated into English after which a little commentary was made about the songs. Among other findings, the study reveals that birth songs are sang by woman in every home where new babies are born. The songs express joy and happiness for the arrival of a new baby and the survival of the mother. The study also reveals that there are words contained in some of these songs which signifies or indicates the sex of the new born baby. For instance, when the word "egbe' gun' is mentioned in a birth song. it means a baby boy is born; but when 'ego' *money' is mentioned, it means a baby girl is born. These birth songs are called Agbachaa ekuru nwa' in Mbaise dialect of Igbo.

Nigerian Journal of African Studies, 2021

This work is a preliminary study of the sound system of the Nyifon language, a register tone lang... more This work is a preliminary study of the sound system of the Nyifon language, a register tone language which belongs to the Jukunoid group of East Benue Congo family of languages. Nyifon language is one of the endangered minority languages spoken in Benue State of Nigeria. Based on the parameters of measuring endangered languages, the language is classified as being ''definitely endangered'' in the sense that children no longer learn it as mother tongue in the home. More unfortunately, the language has not received considerable study attention as research has shown that the only evidence of study in the language are the historical books depicting the origin and the culture of Nyifon. This paper, therefore, examines the speech sounds of the Nyifon language, their number and how they occur in the language. Through partially structured oral interview and the use of one thousand, seven hundred SIL Comparative African Wordlist (SILCAWL), data for this study were elicited from four informants (native speakers) from each of the ten communities that make up Nyifon, making it a total of forty informants. The study finds out that Nyifon is made up of thirty-one consonants and nine oral vowels, which were described in terms of the articulatory gestures used to produce them. For the phonemes we identified, we devised their letter symbols in order to help in developing a writing system for Nyifon. The study also observed that tone is phonemic in Nyifon and the language has four tones: high, low, downstep and high falling contour tone. The vowels and the syllabic nasals are the tone bearing units in the language. Finally, the study is an immense contribution to the development of minority languages and African languages in general.

Igboscholars International Journal of IGBO SCHOLARS FORUM, 2022

Evidence abounds in the literature that pronunciation provides clues about speaker's ethnic, soci... more Evidence abounds in the literature that pronunciation provides clues about speaker's ethnic, social, educational, or occupational identity; ideology; or attitude etc. This paper on English pronunciation in Nigerian comedy movies seeks to investigate the extent movies characters' pronunciation of English words reveals the characters' ethnic identity as well as create humour among the audience. For the study, four Nigerian comedy movies were randomly selected, and data collected by playing the videos and listening to the pronunciation of English words as used by the characters. Ten adults, five males and five females were interviewed to ascertain the acceptability and patronage of the movies by the audience. For our analysis, the pronunciation of the words by the characters were comedy movies. We recommend research into the aspect of identifying characters' identity through pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax etc.

The Igbo language is multi-dialected. It comprises many varieties but among all, the standard Igb... more The Igbo language is multi-dialected. It comprises many varieties
but among all, the standard Igbo has been universally accepted by
the native speakers of the language to be used in education and for
wider communication throughout the Igbo speaking areas of the
nation. Many varieties of the Igbo language differ in sounds and
sound patterning. This paper investigates the differences in the
phonological patterning of lexical words in Ogidi variant of Igbo
and standard Igbo using the Comparative Method as the
theoretical framework, and the descriptive approach to data
analysis. This phonological patterning would sometimes involve
the alternation of the standard Igbo /s/, /r/ and /w/ with /ts/, /l/ and
/b/respectively in the Ogidi variant. The paper tries to find out in
what words such alternation occurs. Among other things, it
discovers that the standard Igbo /s/ is not found in Ogidi-Igbo, and
so, the dialect substitutes it with /ts/ which is found as the closestmatch phoneme for /s/ in Ogidi. For /r/ and /l/phonemes, they are
observed to be in free variation in most words, though with few
exceptions in words like ọ́ rị̀à 'sickness', rị́ọ́ 'beg/plea' and ụ̀ rị́ọ́ m̄'a
sign made by hand in rejection of evil'. Then, the substitution of
standard Igbo /w/ with /b/ in the Ogidi-Igbo occurs most times, but
not entirely, mainly in words containing the inceptive extensional
suffix -we/-wa 'start/begin to'.

TONE AND PREFIXATION: A PARADIGM SHIFT IN NEGATION IN ORSU DIALECT OF IGBO, 2021

There are some concepts in linguistics like negation among others, which are a sine-qua-non for e... more There are some concepts in linguistics like negation among others, which are a sine-qua-non for everyday human communication. The implication of this existence is its universal nature as all languages of the world adopt a unique negative particle. GHI has been established as the negative particle used in the Igbo language, which is usually a type of affix known to be suffix. Hence, this paper aims at revealing the peculiar strategy used by Orsu dialect of the Igbo language in achieving negation for various constructions. The researchers contracted about five different native speakers for the data using a voice recorder. The native speakers were in the age bracket of 50-70 years comprising of three men and three women, as the young native speakers don't speak the Orsu dialect anymore. The researchers visited the native speakers severally in order to get an authentic equivalent of the sentences written down in Standard Igbo. Having researched on the Orsu dialect of Igbo, we observed that the dialect basically adopts tone variation as a strategy for marking negation. Then, the prefix gla/dri/gri which is usually used only for the formation of the subjunctive sentence is also a sign of consonant cluster, and an unusual situation in Igbo to mark negation. This claim is in line, and can be justified by Obiamalu's (2013) paper on the role of tone in Igbo negation in Nneewi and Onicha lects. The researchers, therefore, register that tone as well as vowel lengthening and prefixation are the paramount strategies for negation in Orsu.

This paper, a contrastive study of the phonology of Igbo and Yoruba, is aimed at finding out the ... more This paper, a contrastive study of the phonology of Igbo and Yoruba, is aimed at finding out the phonological problems the Igbo learners of Yoruba and the Yoruba learners of Igbo will encounter in their learning Yoruba and Igbo, respectively, as their L2. Using existing works on the phonology of Igbo and Yoruba, the researchers compared the consonants, vowels and tonal systems of both languages. Igbo is made up of twenty-eight consonants and eight oral vowels, while Yoruba has eighteen consonants, and twelve vowels comprising seven oral vowels and five nasal vowels. The contrastive analysis carried out evinced that there are some sounds in Igbo which are not present in Yoruba; also some sounds in Yoruba are not in Igbo. For example, /p kw gw v z ŋ ŋw ɲ ɣ ʧ / are Igbo phonemes which Yoruba lacks. Another striking difference between the two languages is the presence of nasal vowels in Yoruba, / ĩ ɛ ̃ ã ɔ ̃ ũ /, which do not exist in Igbo. Also, /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ are in Igbo and not in Yorub...

International Journal of Current Research in the Humanities, 2019

The focus of this paper is the comparison of tone in the Nyifon and Igbo languages of Nigeria, ai... more The focus of this paper is the comparison of tone in the Nyifon and Igbo
languages of Nigeria, aimed at revealing the similarities, differences and
uses of tone in both languages. The study will pave the way for further
investigation and application of theories to the study of tone and other
phenomena in Nigerian languages, especially the less studied like
Nyifon. Data for Igbo were obtained from ten Igbo native speakers,
existing literature, and the researchers’ native speaker intuition. For
Nyifon, thirty native speakers provided the data. From our data,
descriptively analyzed, the study discovers that the two languages have
three level tones in common- high, low and downstep. In addition,
Nyifon has a high falling contour tone. Although tone performs lexical
and grammatical functions in both languages, its degree of involvement
differs significantly. From our data, the only grammatical function of
tone in Nyifon is differentiating interrogatives from declaratives. In Igbo,
tone performs this function and many more, including differentiating
canonical words from associative words, proper from common nouns,
subjunctive from imperative sentences, and relative clause from
declarative sentence. On the differentiation of interrogatives from
declaratives, Igbo changes high tone of the pronominal subject of
declaratives to low for interrogatives while Nyifon uses a contrasting
tone on reduplicated final vowel for interrogative. The findings call for
more researches on the phonology of Nigerian languages for their better
appreciation, ICT application and use in language pedagogy.