Contrastive Liuistics: An exploration of ideaophones in Yoruba and Edo speech communiities (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
Crystal (1997: 189) defines “Ideophones” as “a term used in linguistics and phonetics for any vivid representation of an idea in sound, such as occurs through onomatopoeia”. Ideophones tend to be longer in terms of the combination of sounds than lexical classes. Thus, it enables the users to pack meaning into single morphemes thereby making the words semantically multidimensional. (Woodbury1987:715). Vowel repetition or lengthening is also a characteristic of ideophones. Ideophones are often phonologically anomalous in terms of sounds and sound sequences, tonal structure and phonological behaviour. (Welmer1973:27). In any case, these features have an income relation between sound and meaning. Just like any natural language, ideophones represent a robust word category in African language. To this end, this work is designed to arrive at an applicable analysis and classification of Edo and Yoruba ideophones using a contrastive approach inspired by the idea of canonical typology. The th...
Fortition and reduplication in Leggbo ideophones
Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 2007
This article describes ideophones in Leggbo, a Cross River language of Nigeria. It focuses on two processes-fortition and reduplication-in the language and their special relation to ideophones. Fortition involves consonant gemination and lengthening and is used for intensification. Reduplication can be either lexical or grammatical. Ideophones can have an inherent repetitive structure but they can also employ reduplication like other modifiers to signal the plurality of nouns, or the diminutive of verbs. Both fortition and reduplication can occur in the same form, especially in ideophones. It is speculated that fortition could have arisen diachronically in ideophones before spreading to other parts of the language. If this scenario is assumed, it argues for treating ideophones in Leggbo, if not in other languages, as central rather than marginal parts of linguistic systems.
Arusha Working Papers in African Linguistics, Vol. 4
2022
Alege is one of the undescribed languages that belong to the Bendi language family spoken in Cross River State, Nigeria, West Africa. This study examines the vowel system of the language. Data for this work was gathered primarily through a series of fieldwork carried out between 2016 and 2019. The descriptive approach is employed in providing both phonetic and phonemic analyses of the data. For the analysis and interpretation of the phonetic data, the study utilizes the Praat software. We also exploit the classical phonemic parameters of contrast and distribution in determining the phonemic status of vowels in the language. Findings from the study show that Alege has twenty-eight phonetic vowels and nine oral phonemic vowels /i ɪ e ɛ ɑ ɔ o ʊ u/. Eight of the nine vowel phonemes, except for /o/, have nasalized counterparts that are restricted to word-final position in their distribution. Vowel length is not contrastive but is phonetic in certain environments. Phonemically, instances of perceived long vowels are analyzed as cases of sequences of identical short vowels. One defining quality of the vowel system of most Niger-Congo languages is vowel harmony that is based on the Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) feature. Interestingly, Alege language which is classified under the Benue-Congo group does not show any form (total or partial) of vowel harmony.
IDEOPHONES IN DZƏ (JENJO), AN ADAMAWA LANGUAGE OF NORTHEASTERN NIGERIA
Language in Africa, 2020
Ideophone is a phenomenon dominant in African languages. Dzə is an under-investigated and under-documented Adamawa language found in Taraba, Adamawa and Gombe States, Northeastern Nigeria. It was noticed that the language has a lot of ideophones. It became necessary to study it to understand its importance in the language. This study is to draw the attention of scholars working on Ada-mawa languages and ideophones. It will also thus form part of the grammar of Dzə someday. The study of ideophone is not exhaustive, especially in the minority languages of Northeastern Nigeria. The study shows that Dzə ideophones express intensity, emphasis and description. Dzə ideophones have unique phonological features and some of the sounds found in the conventional phonology of Dzə are not found in the ideophones. The phoneme /ŋ/ is common in the coda position of the ideophones. Ideophones modify verbs, adjectives and nouns in Dzə. They also function as adverbs and are elements that constitute a noun phrase. They augment other word classes like nouns, verbs and adjectives.
Phonological patterning of words of Ogidi dialect and Standard Igbo
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'.
Disambiguating Yorùbá tones: At the interface between syntax, morphology, phonology and phonetics
Lingua, 2011
This paper considers a particular type of tonal behavior in Yorùbá with the goal of testing whether syntactic and phonological domains converge or diverge. We consider two types of syntactically conditioned phonological rules: (i) the appearance of phonological elements not present lexically (epenthesis/insertion), (ii) the loss of phonological elements (deletion). These types of rules are often tightly interconnected as the
Consonant Types and Pitch of Tone in the Igbo Language: An Acoustic Analysis
This work sets out to analyze the pitch of tone in lexemes in the Igbo language to find out the effect of consonant types occurring before vowels on the pitch of the tone of the vowels. The data are collected from two males and two females from each dialect using structured personal interview and the data recorded electronically. In the findings the pitch of the vowels following plosives are higher than those following other classes of consonants. Also the tone of the vowel does not affect the F0 of the tone. Finally the downstepped high tone does not have influence on the pitch of the vowel. We therefore conclude that the downstepped high tone in the Igbo language in line with what is found in the literature, consonant types do have effect on the pitch of tone of following vowels.
A Contrastive Study of the Phonology of Igbo and Yoruba
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 Yoruba, while /ɛ/ is present in Yoruba but absent in Igbo. Although both languages have high and low tones, Yoruba also has a mid tone while Igbo also has a downstep tone. Following the tenets of contrastive analysis (CA), these differences are presumed to constitute learning difficulties. To make the learning of these languages easy for our stated learners, all the predicted areas of difficulties must be properly handled by the language teachers to avert the manifestation of the predicted errors in the speech of the learners. This could be achieved by making the Igbo learners of Yoruba master the production of those Yoruba sounds they are not familiar with; and
PHONOLOGICAL ADAPTATION OF ENGLISH LOANWORDS IN IGBO
PLOCAC INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND SECURITY STUDIES; Vol. 1 No. 1 ISSN 2476-8057
Language contact is as old as man. As people move around to overcome their economic, political and social challenges, they move along with different languages. These languages meet and borrow from one another. The Igbo and the English languages are some of the instances of languages contact. This study investigated phonological processes the English loanwords in Igbo undergo. Some English loanwords were collated and analyzed using the questionnaire method. It is discovered that the loanwords are not just borrowed into the Igbo language; they do undergo different phonological processes like vowel and consonant modification, vowel insertion and deletion. It is also discovered that the pitch is not left out in the involved phonological processes. Words in English are changed from stressed words to tone words in Igbo. The study reveals the effects of the contact of English and Igbo. It also reveals the flexibility in the development of Igbo words.