* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Download Noun Formation in Auchi
Navajo grammar wikipedia , lookup
Spanish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Lithuanian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Old Irish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Kannada grammar wikipedia , lookup
Modern Hebrew grammar wikipedia , lookup
Ukrainian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Portuguese grammar wikipedia , lookup
Latin syntax wikipedia , lookup
Modern Greek grammar wikipedia , lookup
Ojibwe grammar wikipedia , lookup
Arabic grammar wikipedia , lookup
Old English grammar wikipedia , lookup
Distributed morphology wikipedia , lookup
Old Norse morphology wikipedia , lookup
Agglutination wikipedia , lookup
Compound (linguistics) wikipedia , lookup
Ancient Greek grammar wikipedia , lookup
Serbo-Croatian grammar wikipedia , lookup
Swedish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Russian declension wikipedia , lookup
Vietnamese grammar wikipedia , lookup
Zulu grammar wikipedia , lookup
Esperanto grammar wikipedia , lookup
Malay grammar wikipedia , lookup
Yiddish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Romanian nouns wikipedia , lookup
Turkish grammar wikipedia , lookup
Scottish Gaelic grammar wikipedia , lookup
Morphology (linguistics) wikipedia , lookup
French grammar wikipedia , lookup
Noun Formation in Auchi Ayankogbe, Beatrice Osaro Department of Linguistics, African and Asian Studies, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria. E-mail:[email protected] Telephone: 08033185353 Abstract This paper is an overview of noun formation processes in Auchi dialect of Afenmai. In the Nigerian multilingual milieu where endangered languages suffer inadequate research and promotion, a study of this kind is a crucial morphological investigation. Indeed, Adegbija (1994:141) notes that Nigeria’s multi-ethnic sociolinguistic trend features a situation whereby the three major languages in the country: Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo are more developed in terms of orthography, codification and literary potentials. I have hinged on theoretical morphology concepts (e.g. such as prefix, suffix, stem, affix, calquing, reduplication) to explain the interesting features and functions of noun formation in Auchi. Keywords: Afenmai, Auchi, morphology, morpheme, noun 1. Introduction Afenmai is part of Edo. According to Oseni (2003) Afenmai ethno-geography include AkokoEdo, Etsako West, Owan East and Owan West Local Government Areas of Edo State of Nigeria. The people of Afenmai have a multiplicity of dialects that are clans-based. Auchi is both a clan and a dialect of Afenmai. It is worthy of note that most Afenmai dialects are mutually intelligible. Several components of grammar can be subjected to morphological study. However, in this paper, I choose to investigate the morphology of Auchi nouns. This is a crucial study because Afenmai nouns demonstrate rich morpho-syntactic relations with other sentential elements: demonstrateive and relative pronouns, adjectives, determiners, verbs, to mention but a few. 2. Theoretical Underpinnings Notions relevant to this study are briefly examined below: 2.1 Morphology, Word and Morpheme William O. and Videa de G.V. opine that Linguists use the term “morphology” to refer to “the part of the Grammar that is concerned with words and word formation.” A word is a linguistic unit composed of one or more morphemes. It is also the unit of which phrases are composed e.g. bags, national, discouragement, etc. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful grammatical unit of a word. It is the most fundamental unit in the study of word formation. An example is “boys” which is made up of the free morpheme “boy” and the bound morpheme “–s (plural)”. The two major types of morphemes are “free morpheme” and “bound morpheme”. A free morpheme is a morphological unit which can exist in isolation. Examples are: good, table, manage, regard, etc. which function as root/stem for the addition of other morphemes to produce new words. A bound morpheme on the other hand, does not exist in isolation, but can only be recognized when it is joined to other morphemes. Examples are the plural and past tense suffixes as well as the negation prefix in the words below: dog-s (plural suffix) want-ed (past tense suffix) un-happy (negation/not prefix) Morphemes combine to form words. Each type of morpheme has a specific role in this combination. Free morphemes perform the function of “root” morpheme to which other morphemes are added to form different words. For example, in the word “international” the root morpheme is “nation”. It is to this root that other morphemes such as –al (national) and inter(international) are added. It is possible to have more than one root in a word. In “milkmaids” the two free morphemes: “milk” and “maid” form the root to which the plural morpheme is added. A bound morpheme could combine with a free morpheme to function as root/stem to receive other words. For example, the combination of the root and bound morpheme (“nation” and “-al”) in “internationally” function as stem/root to receive “inter-” and this derives “international”. Finally, this new word functions as stem for the addition of –ly to form “internationally”. Morphemes which perform an inflectional function only provide more syntactic information without changing the class (parts of speech) of the word. Common examples of inflectional morphemes are the plural and tense suffixes in English: Plural: pen (Singular Noun); pen-s (Plural Noun) make (Present Tense Verb); made (Past Tense Verb); making (Continuous Tense Verb) Except for {-en}, the “regular” English inflections are as follows: nouns: {-s} plural (the birds) noun phrases {-s} genitive/possessive (the bird’s song) adjectives/adverbs: {-er} comparative (faster) {-est} superlative (fastest) verbs: {-s} 3rd person singular present tense (proves) {-ed} past tense (proved) {-ing} progressive/present participle (is proving) {-en} past participle (has proven) (was proven) Morphemes which perform derivational function usually change the syntactic class of a lexical item to which they are attached: Verb Noun ride ride-r teach teach-er Noun boy affection Adjective boy-ish affection-ate In some derivationally related word pairs, only a feature of the final consonant changes, usually, its voicing: advice advise /s/ = /z/ belief believe /f/ = /v/ In some cases, adding a derivational morpheme induces a change in a stressed vowel: divine divinity /aI/ = /I/ profane profanity /eI/ = /ae/ In a multi-syllabic word with a stressed tense vowel, the palatalization may be accompanied wth a laxing of that vowel: collide collision elide elision /d/ /d/ = /3/ /aI/ = /3/ /aI/ = = /I/ /I/ English permits changing a word’s part of speech without any change of form (called “functional shift” or “zero derivation”): This “saw” is reliable. (noun) You may “saw” that wood. (verb) 3. Features and Functions of Noun Formation Processes in Auchi In this section I discuss the features and functions of noun formation in Auchi: (a) Free Morpheme: Auchi nouns operate as free morphemes. Examples include: anyō (wine) obe (book) ugwe (pot) ekho (disgrace) okpa (cock) ukhia (okro) etha (wood) amhe (water) egbē (body) ēmhi (yam) ēnwe (ashes) enye (snake) otha (tree) okpa (one) eda (river) ovba (home) ikpo (clothes) iyo (mother) ozi (crab) obo (hand) élami (meat) okogua (bush) aki (farm) ime (farm) uvuamhi (lid) utsatsō (broom) athu (cap) (b) Bound Morpheme: In forming nouns, Auchi uses suffixes as inflectional morphemes: egbe – root nwhume - suffix egbenwhume (happiness) egbe - root nenwu – suffix egbenenwu (to be happy/happiness) Auchi bound morphemes (prefixes and suffixes) are sometimes used as determiners in the formation of nouns e.g.: kh’ovbie – suffix e (Your child) Isuē – suffix ē (The nose) onolege – prefix ono (That day) In Auchi, a zero-morpheme can be used to create a noun that has no rival (another kind of definite referent) e.g.: uzhi (the law) okui (the sky) (c) Multiple Referents:In the language, a single noun-word may have various but similar referents. In such an instance, the context determines what the speaker means. For example, otoo means “down/ground/floor”. Similarly, Ade ke means “fool/foolishness”. Whereas English generates an entire new word via a morphological process (suffixing) to shift the meaning from “a person” (fool) to “having the quality of” (foolishness), Auchi simply relies on tone marking to achieve a two-fold sense in the use of a given noun. It is therefore worthy of note that Auchi nouns are used or formed pragmatically so that they can have connotative communicative functions. The noun ēlamhi (meat) is used both denotatively (to refer to “meat” that can be eaten) and connotatively (to refer to “a fool”). Thus, the pragmatic and semantics of Auchi nouns show their divergence from the norms of the English nouns. There are cases where Auchi use optional nouns to refer to same person or thing irrespective of context. This shows that the vocabulary of the language is somewhat rich. For example, osi or osinegba refers to “God”. (d) Reduplication: Nouns are also formed in Auchi through reduplication of last sound: agōgō (time) oko oko (millipede) apepe (fan) ukpatata (a star) (e) Nominalization: Apart from using the Auchi agentive marker o no (one who) to nominalize linguistic stretches, the agentive o (one who) can also nominalize linguistic stretches. It is a matter of tone marking in the language 1. Consider: O gwimē eka (A farmer of maize/ one who farms maize) O wene ebe (one who studies/a scholar) (f) Compounding: Nouns are sometimes formed indicating the source of an element in the compound. Examples: ukpuvi (palm kernel) meaning “kernel from palm tree” elamiokogwa (bush meat) meaning “meat from the forest/bush” Auchi also accommodates a compounding process, which involves compounding nouns with other nouns or with verbs. The expression ēbē owena (study book) is a noun-noun compound while ēlami ōkōgwa (bush meat) is an example of noun-verb compound. (g) Calquing: This is a process of reducing an entire phrase or sentence to a single word. Acheoah (2013) submits that Afenmai contracts Ēmētsoya (what reaches someone), ukpōnopa (white cloth), Ēmikē (what I want) to form a single noun. The Auchi equivalent of Ēmikē (Agenebode dialect) is Ēmikēle. The study exemplifies further that a monosyllabic verb can also be combined with a monosyllabic noun as in le ēbē (to have knowledge of books) from le (know) and ēbē (book). A word that is made a nominal occupies either subject or object position in Afenmai. For example, the adjective togia (hot) occupies either subject or object position when it used as a noun itogia (hotness). Consider: kha zoo togia (Do not let it be hot) ēmētōgia ôsomi (Something hot is not good) ēgbēme o tōgia (My body is hot) (h) Gender Formation: Auchi gender nouns exhibit morpho-syntactico-semantic relations with other grammatical elements in utterances. See Tomori (1977) for insights on English morphology and syntax. Indeed, Corbett (1991) views gender as a particular type of noun classification strategy. In the Auchi sentence: O no mie em’o rha gwe mie ogie oi mho egbegb’ avbulu ku o egbe (One who has something important to tell the king may have no good garment to wear) the themes of power, honor and leadership revolve around the word ogie (king) which is a masculine gender, and this is not incidental in the language. Other themes such as love, care, tenderness or beauty may be reflected around feminine nouns such as omosi (girl/female), iyo (mother) or okposo (woman). Francesco (2013) posits that in a language like French, where grammatical gender is marked on the article, speakers “know that a masculine article has to go with a masculine noun, if we perceive any other combination we know that something has gone wrong. Gender systems are components of grammar which are potent in reference tracking 2. In many African languages, nouns can be assigned to a given gender on the basis of a combination of semantic and formal (morphologicaland/or phonological) properties. All gender systems are in a sense mixed since “there is always a semantic core…” (Aikhenvald 2003:22). Auchi gender dominantly reflect animacy and sex. 4. Conclusion The paper interestingly engages noun formation in Auchi, a dialect of Afenmai. Apart from listing the features of noun formation in the language, the paper mentions the functions. Auchi nouns operate as free or bound morphemes. Therefore, they are affixed as prefixes, stem or suffixes with certain internal grammatical patterns inherent in the language. Besides, they exhibit morphological processes such as reduplication, calquing, compounding. They show gender, apart from the fact that their use and meanings are sometimes based on tone marking and context. Notes I establish in 2.1 that derivational morphemes are produced in English via phonological features. Auchi therefore possesses this feature, although it is exhibited differently in both languages. For example, in certain instances, Auchi does not only add tone mark, but extends last vowel segment in deriving a verb from a noun as in: Ojo (Noun) - Ô joo (Verb) - Senior to be senior As can be seen above, with the correct placement of Afenmai punctuation marks (tone marks) on the word, the difference between the noun form and the verb form is made clear (cf. Acheoah ibid.). 2. Francesca (ibid.) submits that “among the most common sources of gender in language we count demonstratives and anaphoric pronouns (Greenberg 1978) as well as nouns (Corbett 1991). References Adegbija, Efurusibina. (1994). “The Context of Language Planning in Africa”. In Martin Putz (ed.) Language Contact and Language Conflict. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. B. V. p.141. Acheoah, J. E. (2013). “A Contrastive Analysis of English and Afenmai Morphology.” In International Journal of Arts and Humanities, Volume 2, Issue 1: 29 – 35. Aikhenvald, Alexandra. (2003). Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Corbett, Greville. (1991). Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Francesca, Garba (2013). “Evaluative Morphology and Noun Classification: A Cross-linguistic Study of Africa.” In SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics. Vol. 10, no. 1 Oseni, Zakariyau I. (2003). Afenmai Proverbs. Auchi. Darun-Nur. Tomori S, H. (1977). The Morphology and Syntax of Present-day English: An Introduction. London. Heinemann. William O, Videa de G. “Morphology: the Analysis of Word Structure.” In William O. Archibald J. eds. Contemporary Linguistic Analysis: An Introduction. Canada. Pearson Education. 2004. pp.98-132.