A Linguistic Analysis of the Ígálâ Plural Markers, àma-/àbó-
Keywords:
Igala, morphological status, pro-inflectional affix analysis, plural markers, àma-/àbó-Abstract
The morphological status of the Igala plural markers is not clear based on varied accounts. One account claims they are inflectional/affixal elements while the other claims they are lexical elements. This paper is a pro-inflectional affix analysis of the Igala plural marker with linguistic evidence from the levels of phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax. Language samples for this paper come from the native speakers of Igala through direct personal contact in day-to-day social interactions, supplemented by the researcher’s intuition as a native speaker of the Dekina variety of Igala and archival evidence. The data are glossed morpheme-by-morpheme for analysis within a descriptive paradigm with no particular recurs to a specific theory. The plural morphemes are analyzed as VCV syllable structures in conformity with the typical syllable pattern of the language, with dialectal phonological variation responsible for the àbó-/àm ̀bó- interchange. The paper treats the plural morphemes as agglutinative affixes which mark plural inflection, the affixation of the morphemes being syntactically determined as typical of inflectional paradigms. The paper further establishes the plural markers as elements devoid of the semantic contents usually associated with homophonous nominal elements to the plural markers. The syntactic rule of relativization affects the combination of the plural markers and nouns in a manner characteristic of inflectional affix-stem rather than word-word relationship. This paper therefore establishes a linguistic analysis of the plural markers in Igala as inflectional elements and concludes that the Igala plural affixes are àma- and àbó-, which attach to noun stems for plural formation.
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