The Noun Class System of Ogbia

Abstract

This paper investigates the noun class system of the Ogbia language. The criteria used to group the nouns into different classes is based on the ability of the noun stem prefixes alternating in the formation of most plurals, thus forming a semantic grouping where certain items have some semantic correlation and concord or agreement markers. The classification of nouns is done is done through the alternation of different prefixes to show singular and plural nouns. The language has ten vowels which exhibit an almost complete vowel harmony system. Hence, noun class prefixes have to agree with the inherent vowels of the stem. Vowels with [+] or [-] ATR co-occur with other vowels that share the same feature in a noun stem. Three vowels in the language do not occur at stem initial position and consonants do not begin nouns in the language. The concord or agreement markers used here are the attributive and predicative adjectives, the relative pronoun concord, the demonstrative concord marker, the possessive pronoun concord marker and the adjectival phrase concord marker. The definite article ‘the’ marks for number in the language of study. While this is not discussed separately in this study, it is noticed that it occurs as a suffix and not a prefix. Based on Welmers (1973) description of a noun class language, the language can be classified as having a vestigial noun class system.