Syllabic Analysis of Selected Bole Ideophones

Abstract

According to Haruna (2014), Bole is one of the seriously endangered languages, hence, the need for linguists to come to its rescue. Thus, this study will form part of documentations on the language: it will help in documenting, revitalizing and safe-guarding the language. This paper titled ‘Canonical shape analysis of Bole ideophones’ has examined one of the phonological aspects of ideophones: ‘syllabic structure’ of Bole language – a West Chadic language spoken in some states of northeastern Nigeria. The research seeks to explore the phenomenon using a descriptive approach adopted by Newman (2000). It is made up of three parts, namely: introduction, analysis and conclusion. Ninety-six lexical items have been collected for the analysis and Fika dialect is the source of the data. The activities in the field may involve: conversations with randomly sampled adults within the ages of 35 years and above who are expected to be most competent speakers who are both educated or non-educated, though being a native speaker, my intuitive knowledge is an additional primary source of data for the research.