Institute of African and Diaspora Studies

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    Open Access
    Taboo Expressions in Yorùbá Society
    (Department of Linguistics, African and Asian Studies, 1993) Yusuff, L.A
    The English word 'taboo' originates from Torgan, a Polynesian language. 'tabu' in Torgan and it means 'act which are forbidden or which are t (Fromkin and Rodman (1978); R adcli.ffe-Brown (1965). ' Taboo is called eewD among; the Yoruba. It MEANS 'fHAT WH RIGHT OR APPROPRIATE. We shall however be concerned with expressions that satisfy the descr iption above. The sludy of the cultur primary to this work, although we s.hall make reference to them where ne Certain expressions in all socier ies are considered taboo expressions be used, especially in polite context s. Forbidden acts or expressions.
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    Open Access
    Assessment of the Role of Western Education in Nigerian National Development
    (JOYTAL PRINTING PRESS, 2002-07) Yusuff, L.A.
    This paper focuses its attention on education as a mind-building phenomenon for the individual so that he may meaningfully contribute to the development of his or her nation The aim of education should go beyond acquisition of knowledge of the subject matter, Indeed, such acquired knowledge should illuminate the mind of the learner so that he would be easy to govern and difficult to enslave, An educated is therefore that individual who is aware of the needs of his society such that he can resist oppression if he is the led and perform creditably well if he is'the leader,
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    Open Access
    Bridging Understanding in Medicare: Template for Effective Communication in Indigenous Languages
    (University of Lagos, 2015) Yusuff, L.A.; Fadairo, O.
    The maintenance of a good patient-doctor relationship, otherwise known as clinical relationship, is central to health care delivery in medical practice. For this reason, the usual practice in medical schools all over the world is to make the attainment of communication skills compulsory for all. A doctor's good communication skills, therefore, are a function of the medical vocabulary with which he communicates with his patients. It has been observed that doctors in many African societies, especially in Yo rubaland, have mostly conveyed their ideas in medical jargons using the English language, and this inevitably breaches clinical relationships. This article seeks to address the issue by proposing a template for the conveyance of medica I terms. in respect of consultation procedures and directional information labels in the hospital environment, in the Yoruba language as a medium of clinical communication. Appealing to concepts embedded in the theory of lexical morphology, this article demonstrates how word formation processes can be used to achieve a Yoruba language template for medical terminologie
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    Open Access
    Maintenance of the Natural Environment in Lagos: Beckoning on Yoruba Cultural Practices
    (Department of English, Linguistics and French, Nigeria Police Academy, Wudil, Kano State, 2017-07-06) Yusuff, L.A.
    In an attempt to search for comfort, man learns to understand his environment and makes use of the endowments of the environment to achieve this comfort, To preserve these natural endowments, every culture explores certain strategies directly and indirectly. Deliberate efforts towards preservation are overtly done, while some are covertly embedded in belief systems and oral genres, While the belief systems have clear spiritual significance, elements a/environmental sanity are hidden in them. This paper looks at the efforts 0/ the Yoruba people in preserving their natural environment from these perspectives by providing relevant and succinct evidence, The paper argues that Yoruba traditional society does not only have organized and effective strategies for upholding the trust between man and his environment, it also has means of confronting sudden natural disasters that may result in major unfavorable changes in crop production and natural habitats(2007 The World Almanac and Book of Facts), Recommendations are drawn from the arguments for improvement in ensuring trust between man and his natural environment in both rural and urban settings,
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    Open Access
    Translation of Ogboju ODE..." A Critiques in Trilingual Dimention
    (University of Benin, 2017-11) Yusuff, L.A.
    This paper, an initial work on trilingual translation critique- Yoruba, English and French- aims at deconstructing and reconstructing reciprocally collonial languages' capacity or incapacity to contain the seemingly polysemous degree of expresivity of the African discourse seen in different shades of literary genre.
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    Open Access
    English Loans in Yoruba Language: Linguistic Empowerment or Disenfranchisement?
    (The Linguistic Association of Nigeria, 2018-12) Yusuff, L.A.
    Many of Nigeria's indigenous languages have developed an intrinsic affinity with the English language, and this has resulted in crossing of forms and elements; and intermixing of linguistic features through loans especially. This paper examines this phenomenon in the Yoruba language with a view to ascertaining its effect on the language. Using the Lexicalists' theory of Generative Morphology, the paper analyzes the structures of some selected loan words in Yoruba. It conjectures that the English language, serving as a veritable communication bridge, boosts the Yoruba lexicon with words for notions and ideas that are alien to the Yoruba culture. Conversely, the Yoruba language has been suffering consistent and systematic lexical percolation through the substitution of native words with English equivalents. On these grounds, it is observed that the system or patterning of loaning in this case comes in three basic ways: domestication, integration and codemixing.
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    Open Access
    Issues and Challenges of Adopting Digital Technologies by African Language Media: The Yoruba Example’ in African Language Digital Media and Communication.
    (Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, London and New York, 2019-08) Yusuff, L.A.
    Humanity has been surviving without the media from time immemorial, but the recent development in information technology has bombarded our generation with information such that human beings can hardly do without the media. Like any other society, accessibility to information among Yoruba people has been made possible by information technology. Since its inception, information technology has made the management of information in the media more efficient and effective such that the media in any language, and in any part of the world, either swim with or sink without it, because it is not just a force but also the driver of modern technological development and a key enabler of information dissemination both in print and electronic forms. Though the development and adoption of information and communications technologies (lCT) by the Yoruba language media is an emerging trend with snail-pace success, there are now concerted efforts by different African media organisations to make full use of the opportunities IT offers. Thus, this study examines varied terms adopted by, Yoruba language media on digital platforms and proffers solutions to the common problem that confronts them regarding their use of varied and sometimes inappropriate terms in the Yoruba language to present news and reports.
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    Open Access
    Machine Translation and Yorùbá: Matters Arising
    (University of Lagos Press and Bookshop Limited, 2020) Eleshin, A.
    The art of translation as an academic discipline was developed over a couple of centuries ago. The relationship between two or more societies and cultures has necessitated the essence of translation. In the mid-twentieth century,machine translation, which is a section of computer-aided translation,was introduced as a form of artificial intelligence in translation studies for the alignment of the source text and target text pairs (Munday,2001).In order to ease the means and methods of translation in the global world and to meet up with the requirement of artificial intelligence, the use of machine translation was validated.This study analyses the form and methods of machine translation with Yorùbá as either the source text or the target text.It has been realized that various inadequacies and inconsistencies exist in the process of translating text to/from Yorùbá.In this study, I have identified three major factors responsible for the inadequacies,namely: (1) linguistic/sociolinguistic; (2)stylistic;and (3) sociocultural. The communicative competence model of language analysis is employed to see if the linguistic approach is capable of proffering solutions to the problems identified above. It is believed that this approach will help validate the process of translating the Yorùbá language appropriately in an automated circumstance.
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    Open Access
    High-Toned Vowel Prefix in Yorùbá
    (Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos, 2020) Eleshin, A.
    In the traditional analysis of Standard Yorùbá prefixes, high-toned vowels and the vowel u are not eligible to be used as prefixes. There have been various explanations to these phenomenon, especially phonological analysis that justifies the exclusion of these two segments from the list of possible prefixes in the language. In their recent works on Yorùbá prefixes, Awobuluyi (2008) and Ilori (2010) claim that consonants in Yorùbá can be used as prefixes to derive gerunds. This paper argues against these two claims and submit that there actually exists a high-toned vowel prefix, í-,in Yorùbá, and that the nouns it derives are gerunds. It employs the theoretical models of Fixed Segmentism (Alderete, Beckman, Benua, Gnanadesikan, McCarthy, Urbanczyk,1999; Keane, 2006) and Augmentative Morphology (Halle & Marantz, 1994; Davis & Tsujimura, 2014)to justify the claim that high-toned vowel prefix í-is a fixed segment with a gerundive feature in the language. However, due to some language internal constraint which does not allow for high-toned vowels to begin v-initial lexical items, such derivations are blocked. The need for augmentation of the ill-formed derivation by copying the initial consonant of the root which is then subsequently moved to the initial position of the derived word, therefore, arises to repair the seeming ill-formedness in the derivation.
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    Open Access
    African Traditional Medicine and the Question of Patients’ Presumed Consent in Difficult Medical Conditions
    (Salvador:Editora Segundo Selo., 2020) Akin-Otiko, A.
    The right of patients to ‘informed consent’ before the commencement of treatment is a fundamental requirement in Western healthcare practice. The first sentence of the Nuremberg Code of 1947 states that patients’ ‘informed consent’ ensures that patients understand the pros and cons of chosen treatment, and are willing to go ahead freely with the prescription given by the healthcare giver. This process is different in the African Traditional Healthcare. Patients’ consent is presumed, especially when ailments are not easily diagnosable. Once the patient’s consent is presumed, African Traditional healthcare givers go ahead to prescribe and treat patients, using best-known prescription. This paper examines the basis for ‘presumed consent’ in African Traditional Medicine, and evaluates its advantages as a procedure in healthcare practice. Data was gathered from patients and also from African Traditional healthcare givers regarding ‘presumed consent’. Gathered data were analyzed using descriptive method. It was concluded that presumed consent is a positive part of African Traditional Medicine based on the research findings.
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    Open Access
    Typology of Headedness in Yorùbá Nominal Derivations
    (Language Research Institute, Sejong University, 2021-03) Eleshin, A.
    This study examines headedness in different nominalisation processes in Yorùbá. This research aims to investigate possible unification of head analysis in Yorùbá nominalisation. Three major word formation strategies exist in Yorùbá, namely, affixation, reduplication and nounnoun compounding (N-N compounding henceforth). The morphosyntactic relationship among these three, in respect to a unifying analytical goal, has not been fairly considered. Operation merge, with other principles of the Minimalist Programme, is selected to validate my claim about the unified analysis of headedness in Yorùbá. This paper employs the qualitative method of data collection. Data were sourced from both primary and secondary means. I claim that there exists a parallel morphosyntactic structure for the three nominalisation processes in Yorùbá. I establish that the three nominalisation structures have the same syntactic representation as far as their headedness and their internal syntax is concerned. Findings in this study show that, firstly, prefixes, reduplicant and the first noun in an N-N compounding are the head. Secondly, they all occupy the same parallel positions in their varying structures.