The Tense System of Ìyàgbà
Keywords:
Ìyàgbà, negative, affirmative, phi-features, high tone syllable (HTS)Abstract
Tense is the linguistic representation of time. Extant studies on tense in Yorùbá linguistics fail to differentiate tense from aspect while some other linguists deny the existence of tense as a grammatical category. Another prominent position is that high tone syllable (HTS) marks non-future tense. This study therefore, investigates tense system in Ìyàgbà dialect of Yorùbá with a view at placing the grammatical category in proper perspective by describing its notion, identifying the tense markers, accounting for their variants and describing the derivation of Tense Phrase (TP) in both negative and affirmative constructions. The theoretical framework adopted is Minimalist Program. Data comprised structured interview guided by the 400 Ìbàdàn wordlist and Ìbàdàn syntactic checklist with 5 competent speakers of Ìsánlú variety of Ìyàgbà community. The data were subjected to interlinear glossing, syntactic and qualitative analyses. In Ìyàgbà dialect, the basic forms of tense markers are: á for future tense in affirmative construction; à for future tense in negative clause and abstract or covert marker for non-future tense in both negative and affirmative clauses. Tense Phrase projects from Tense head and acts as probe that triggers the subject Determiner Phrase to its (TP) specifier for the valuation of the phi-features of the Determiner Phrase. The high tone syllable is proposed as markers of agreement, third person short pronouns, and encoder of negative features on short pronouns as opposed to the non-future tense-marking claim. The investigation supports the modification of the hierarchical order of the infinitival layer as: Negative Phrase>Tense Phrase>light verb Phrase >lexical Verb Phrase.
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