A morpho-syntactic account of ni in Mọ̀bà Yorùbá
| dc.contributor.author | Ajíbóyè, O | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2020-09-02T10:11:32Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2020-09-02T10:11:32Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2011-01-04 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Mọ̀bà, a dialect of Yorùbá, shows a lot of similarities with Standard Yorùbá. The two speech forms behave alike with respect to most phonological rules (Bámisilẹ̀ 1986, Ajíbóyè 1991). Two examples suffice to illustrate this. One, in both Standard Yorùbá and Mọ̀bà, L tone monosyllabic verbs surface with M before an object NP (Bámigbóṣé 1967: 23, Awóbùlúyì 1978: 52, Bámisilẹ̀ 1986: 87). Two, just as it is difficult to predict which of two contiguous vowels across a morpheme/word boundary gets deleted in Standard Yorùbá, so it is in Mọ̀bà . Thus, Awóbùlúyì's (1988: 70) claim that most phonological rules are morphologically conditioned in Standard Yorùbá is also true of Mọ̀bà. All the works cited above focus on phonology. To the best knowledge of this researcher, no work on Mọ̀bà syntax has yet been undertaken. The present study looks at the syntax of the particle ni in Mọ̀bà. As a comparative study, it will clarify the relation between phonology and syntax on the one hand and more importantly, we believe it will throw light on the function, occurrence and the status of ni, a particle which has generated much debate among Yorùbá scholars. The literature on ni in Standard Yorùbá includes among others Bámigbóṣé (1967, 1972), Awóbùlúyì (1978b, 1987c, 1988), Owólabí (1987), Awóyalé (1985), Carstens (1986) and Yusuf (1989). Different positions have been taken by these scholars on the status of ni in Standard Yorùbá (see Awóyalé 1985: 75-85). In this paper, we look at the occurrence and function of ni in Mọ̀bà. It will be demonstrated that the range of contexts in which ni occurs in Mọ̀bà is different from Standard Yorùbá. Also, Mọ̀bà ni has context-sensitive allomorphs which are in complementary distribution with it. This differs from Standard Yorùbá, where ni is invariant. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.issn | 0024-3841 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://ir.unilag.edu.ng/handle/123456789/8792 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Niger-Congo Syntax and Semantics, University of Ghana, Legon, Bulletin of the Institute of African Studies (Legon) | en_US |
| dc.title | A morpho-syntactic account of ni in Mọ̀bà Yorùbá | en_US |
| dc.type | Article | en_US |