More on the Indivisibility of {àì-} in Standard Yorùbá
Keywords:
àì, morphological analysis, unitary school, split school, Yorùbá languageAbstract
There are two schools of thought among Yoruba linguists regarding the morphological status of àì; the unitary school and the split school. Various arguments have been put forth by proponents of the two schools to justify their claims. This paper is an attempt to contribute to the debate on the status of àì in Standard Yorùbá (SY). These arguments are examined critical based on data from the language. The two contending positions, àì- as a singular morpheme and à-ì- as two morphemes, are examined. In this paper, we show that evidence from the structure, function and morphological behaviour of àì are consistently in favour of a unitary analysis. Our conclusion is that since a split analysis of àì proves not amenable to morphological tests while a unitary analysis on the other hand shows conformity to such tests, it is beneficial to treat àì as a single indivisible morpheme.
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