Philip Oghenesuowho EKIUGBO

This study  examines how codas of Urhobo-English loanwords are adapted and shows that the strategies adopted in repairing loanword coda in Urhobo are driven by syllabification constraints and universal conventions. Syllabification conditions in languages that forbid filled coda will require that all the consonant sounds in a phonological word that are to be found in the phonetic string are parsed as onsets. Assuming this is true, it has implications for loanword adaptation. Urhobo exclusively permits the open syllable type. Implicitly, all the coda elements of loanwords are likely to be licensed as onsets, which may result in a possible ‘illicit’ onset cluster given the onset condition requirement of the language. Accordingly, this study examines the attested patterns of adaptation of English coda in Urhobo loanwords and their motivations as well as implications. The discussion is built around the theory of constraints and repair strategies.

Received: October 07, 2018 Accepted: October 20, 2018 Published: November 05, 2018 Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Languages exhibit different morphological processes, one of which is affixation, a process by which bound morphemes are attached to root words. In the present study, attempt is made to examine the process of affixation in Izon. It seeks to identify the different affixation types attested in the language and their functions; and draws on evidence from data collected from secondary corpus and cross-checked with a native speaker. The study showed that only suffix and interfix are the affixation types found in the language. KEYWORDS

This paper presents a preliminary report of a survey research on Erohwa speech community. It is based on the field notes from a one day visit to one of the speech communities in which the language is spoken. Erohwa is a south western Edoid language spoken in Delta State and Bayelsa State. Researches on Erohwa are scanty. Besides, the language is never mentioned in any academic fora or studies, hence the visit. The visit was occasioned by the desire to examine the health status of Erohwa. The data underlying the discussion in this report were elicited from six inhabitants of Erohwa community using unstructured interview. Information from secondary source is also employed in the discussion. It was observed, inter alia, that although the Erohwa language exists, and it’s spoken in two communities, there are few speakers of the language left- about 850 contrary to Ethnologue’s estimation of 64,000 speakers. Most of these speakers are already in their sixties (and above). It was also noted that there intergenerational transfer of the language has ceased. The foregoing suggests that the language is severely endangered, and in need of urgent documentation and revitalization efforts.

Extant literature on the vowel system of Uvwiẹ shows that the language contrasts nine oral and nine nasal vowels, and operates a full vowel harmony system defined by tongue root position. Preliminary observation of current data from the language however suggest otherwise. The present study therefore re-examines the vowel system of Uvwiẹ. It presents a descriptive phonological account of the vowel inventory and their putative behaviour within the phonological grammar of the language. Data for the study were drawn from the corpus documented in the appendix section of Ekiugbo (2016), and analysed within the descriptive framework. The study found amongst other things that the language contrasts seven (oral) vowels, and that co-occurrence restriction on vowel distribution is partial. The oral vowels contrast with their nasal counterparts. The study also showed the different vowel processes and vowel behaviours attested in the language.

An examination of the literature on the sound system of Uvwiẹ shows absence of a full description of its sound system, conflicting representations of the sound inventory of the language and arguments which are better held as tentative. This study therefore seeks to bridge these gaps. It examines the sound system of the language in order to
present a more detailed and accurate fact about the sound system of the language. Specifically, the study seeks to investigate the phonetic sounds of the language drawing upon evidence from instrumentation, examine the phonetic behaviour of the sounds, identify the functional status of the sounds, examine the phonological grammar and verify claims from previous studies.
The corpus of data for the study comprises 688 lexical items and 41 sentences drawn from both primary and secondary sources. Primary data consist of 638 and 27 Uvwiẹ lexical items and sentences respectively elicited from two adult native speakers of the language using a 700-item word list and a recording device as instruments. Secondary data were drawn from previous works on the language. The study employed two theoretical frameworks because the work is two-pronged. The phonetic investigation of the sound system is based on the acoustic theory of speech production, while the phonological analysis is based on classical phonemics. The former theory describes speech sounds as acoustic signal. The instrument used in this study is the Praat 6.0.16 software on a notebook running on windows 10...