The Syntax of Noun Phrase Deletion in Ngwa Igbo

Abstract

This article discusses noun phrase ellipsis (NP-Ellipsis) in Ngwa, a variety of the Igbo language spoken in south-eastern Nigeria. It examines how listeners recover meaning from a construction when the noun element is omitted. Effective communication requires adequate mapping of linguistic form and meaning. But, in ellipsis, the usual mappings seem to be entirely absent. This raises the question of how listeners interpret ellipted structures or derive meaning when a word is omitted from a sentence. How are elliptical materials recovered? To address this, the purposive sampling technique was used to draw primary data from participants, complemented with interviews and native-speaker intuition. Secondary data came from the internet and library materials. The descriptive method of analysis was used, with Leipzig Glossing Rule (LGR) of morpheme-to-morpheme inter-linear glossing, and syntactic tree diagrams. The minimalist program (MP) was used in the discussions because it employs fewer linguistic apparatus to construct syntactic structures. The result shows that the deletion of NP is possible in Ngwa Igbo and occurs when the specifier of the determiner phrase (DP) is occupied by quantifiers, possessives, or numerals. In conclusion, NP ellipsis in Ngwa takes place under syntactic identity with an antecedent NP in the same sentence.