Ekiugbo, P.O (2011). AN ASPECT OF THE MORPHOLOGY OF URHOBO: OLOMU DIALECT AS A CASE STUDY. Unpublished B.A project. DELSU

ASPECT OF THE MORPHOLOGY OF URHOBO: OLOMU DIALECT AS A CASE STUDY

BY

EKIUGBO OGHENESUOWHO PHILIP

FOA/07/08/131141

A PROJECT WORK SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS, FACULTY OF ARTS,

 DELTA STATE UNIVERSITY, ABRAKA.

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF BACHELOR OF ARTS (B.A) DEGREE IN LINGUISTICS

NOVEMBER 2011

CERTIFICATION

This is to certify that this project work was carried out by EKIUGBO OGHENESUOWHO PHILIP, of the Department of Languages and Linguistics, Delta State University, Abraka.

_______________ ____________

Mrs. M. Obadan Date/Signature

Project Supervisor

_______________ _____________

Prof. J. Mokobiah Date/Signature

Head of Department

_______________ _____________

External Examiner Date/Signature

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to God Almighty

And

To my loving father, Capt. A.U Ekiugbo.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

With a heart filled with joy unspeakable, I want to appreciate the Almighty God for His loving kindness and tender mercies, especially for seeing me through this DELSU sojourn.

I will also like to appreciate the following people:

My Parents: Capt. And Mrs. A.U. Ekiugbo for their care, support, encouragement and prayers

My Cousins: Mrs. Blessing Adjevabor, Pst. Abel Ekiugbo and Bro. Daniel Ekiugbo. I will never forget your kind gesture. Words are not enough to appreciate you, all the same, thanks a million for your love and support.

My Course Adviser/Project Supervisor: Mrs. M. Obadan- I am eternally grateful for your motherly support, patience and encouragement especially while supervising this project work.

My Lecturers: Prof. R. O. Aziza, Mr. Don Utulu, Mrs. Obikudo, Mr. E. Ifieseh, Mrs. M. Obadan, Mrs. E. Ajiboye, Mrs. E. Aleh, Mr. G. Ivworin among others: thanks for imparting knowledge on me.

My Uncles/Aunt: Uncle John, Uncle Diamond and Aunty Caro; not forgetting my grand mum, Mrs. Bethel Nana, you were so wonderful.

My Friends: Ikpen Julius, Esiri Ejiro, Edu Oghenetega, Okeidesan Ochuko, Ichide Aghogho, members of the Royal Ambassadors of Ughelli Baptist Association, members of the Baptist Student Fellowship, Takpor Victor, Elobenua Precious, Ogidigbo Gaga and Igben Kingsley you guys were so wonderful, I am not ungrateful.

Not forgetting Dr. (Mrs.) N. Edema and to everyone whose name I didn’t write but were very significant in helping me complete my sojourn in DELSU, even to those that cause me pains, you know yourself- Thank you!

ABSTRACT

This study deals with an aspect of the morphology of Olomu dialect of Urhobo. Its center focus is to find out how words are formed in the dialect. These I intend to achieve through the collection of data from primary and secondary sources. The work is divided into four chapters: Chapter one is an introductory note of what the work entails; Chapter two deals with a review of related literature on terms and concepts that are relevant to this work; Chapter three presents, with relevant data, the existence of the most common word formation processes in the dialect; while Chapter four is the summary and conclusion.

NOTATIONS

n --- Noun

v – Verb

Adv --- Adverb

Adj --- Adjective

[  ? ] --- High tone

[ ? ] --- Low tone

[ ! ] --- Down step

[ ˆ ] --- Falling tone

[ ? ] --- Rising tone

PNWE --- Proto North Western Edoid

PNCE --- Proto North Central Edoid

PSWE --- Proto South Western Edoid

PDE --- Proto Delta Edoid

PSNWE --- Proto North Western East Edoid

TABLE OF CONTENT

Title page i

Certification ii

Dedication iii

Acknowledgement iv

Abstract v

Notation vi

Table of content vii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1Background of study 1

1.2An Overview of the Urhobo Language 3

1.3An History of the Olomu People and their Geographical Location4

1.3.1Geographical Location 4

1.3.2 Origin 5

1.4Linguistics Classification of Olomu dialect 9

1.5Statement of Problem 10

1.6Aim of Study 10

1.7Justification of Study 10

1.8Scope and Limitation 11

1.9 Methodology 11

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 Introduction 12

2.1 What is Morphology? 12

2.2 The concept called Morpheme 14

2.2.1 Free morpheme 15

2.2.2 Bound Morpheme 15

2.3 Inflectional and Derivational Morpheme 17

2.4 Word 17

2.4.1 Simple Words 19

2.4.2 Compound Words 19

2.4.3 Complex Words 19

2.4.4 Compound-Complex Words 19

2.5 Word Formation 20

2.5.1 Compounding 20

2.5.2 Reduplication 22

2.5.3 Clipping 23

2.5.4 Borrowing 24

2.5.4.1 Loan Word 25

2.5.4.2 Loan Blend 25

2.5.4.3 Loan Translation 25

2.5.5 Coinage 26

2.5.6 Affixation 26

2.5.6.1 Prefixation 27

2.5.6.2 Suffixation 27

2.5.6.3 Infixation 28

2.5.6.4 Interfixation 28

2.5.6.5 Circumfixation 28

2.5.6.6 Suprafixation 29

CHAPTER THREE

3.0 Introduction 30

3.1 Coinage 30

3.2 Borrowing 31

3.2.1 Loan Word 31

3.2.2 Loan Blend 32

3.2.3 Loan Translation 32

3.3 Clipping 33

3.4 Reduplication 34

3.5 Affixation 35

3.5.1 Prefixation 35

3.5.2 Suffixation 37

3.5.3 Infixation 38

3.5.4 Interfixation 38

3.5.5 Circumfixation 39

3.5.6 Suprafixation 40

3.6 Compounding 40

CHAPTER FOUR: SUMMARY AND CONCLUTION 45

BIBLIOGRAPHY 48

CHAPTER ONE

1.0INTRODUCTION

This chapter is an overview of the work. It is in some senses the foundation stone upon which the rest of the work will be built. It is made up of a background of the study, an overview of the Urhobo language, history of the Olomu people and their geographical location, linguistics classification of Olomu dialect, statement of problem, aim of study, justification of study, scope and limitation of study as well as the methodology used in the study.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Language facilitates the task of communication among humans. It is s means of expressing one’s thoughts and feelings in such a way that one is understood by others. Ndimele (1999:1) defines Language as “a means of communication between individuals who share a common code”. The discipline that is devoted to the study of human language is linguistics. Linguistics endeavours to answer the question on what language is and how it is represented in the mind of the speakers. This it does through the various branches of linguistic analysis such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics etc.

This research work is on morphology. Franklin and Rodman (1978) define morphology as “the study of the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed”. This definition presupposes the fact that morphology studies patterns of word formation within and across languages, and attempt to formulate rules that model the knowledge of the speaker of those languages.

The history of morphological analysis dates back to the ancient Indian Linguist, Panini, who formulated the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology in the text ASHTADHYAYI. The Greco-Roman grammatical tradition also engaged in morphological analysis. Studies in Arabic morphology conducted by Mará al-arwa and Amad b.?ali Mas‘?d date back to at least 1200CE. The term Morphology was first used by the German linguist August Scheicher in1859 (Wikipedia).

Fundamental concepts in morphology includes: Morphological typologies (which deals with the categorization of a language according to the extent to which words in the language are clearly divisible into individual morphemes), Morphological processes (the various ways through which new words are coined into a language, sometimes used inter-changeably with word formation processes), Morphosyntactic (the study of linguistic unit that have both morphological and syntactic properties), Lexemes and Word-Form (the dictionary entry of a word and the different realization of a word, respectively), Inflection and Derivation (Two related affixation processes- Inflection modifies a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, mood, voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case while Derivation results in totally separate words).

The study of the morphology of Olomu dialect is of interest to the researcher because it provides the basis for the expansion of the vocabulary of any language, to cater for our dynamic world.

1.2 AN OVERVIEW OF THE URHOBO LANGUAGE

Urhobo belongs to the Edoid group of languages. Its sound system consists of thirty-one consonants and seven oral vowels which have nasal counterpart. The consonants are grouped into two namely Single Consonant and Combined Consonant or Digraph. The single consonant is made up of eighteen letters while the combined consonant or digraph is made up of thirteen letters.

The eighteen letters of the single consonant are:

bdfg hjkl m

nprs tvwyz

The thirteen letters of the combined consonant are:

djgbghghwhwkpmw

nyphrhshchvw

The seven oral vowels are:

ae?I o?u

The Urhobo syllable structure includes V, CV, VCV etc. The language does not permit consonant cluster, the digraph are considered as a single consonants hence they are phonemically written with a diacritic [^] as in [gb].

Linguist, such as Kelly (1969), Welmers (1969, 1975), Elugbe (1973, 1977, 1986) and Aziza (1997) examined the Urhobo tone system and agreed that Urhobo has a terraced level tone system with the following characteristics:

1.Two basic tones namely high-tone and low-tones.

2.Two gliding tone (Rising and Falling) which are derived from the basic tones.

3.Only vowel segments bear tones; there are no syllabic consonant.

4.An automatic down-step is realized when a high tone precede a low tone.

1.3 HISTORY OF THE OLOMU PEOPLE AND THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION

1.3.1 GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION

Olomu kingdom is a very prominent kingdom located in the south-eastern part of Urhoboland in Delta State, Nigeria. It occupies that region that lies between latitude 7°12? North 4°28? East and longitude  ?7.2° North 4.467° E? / 7.2; 4.467ast (Wikipedia) with an estimated area of approximate total population of seven thousand work out at one hundred and thirty-two per square; and a population of about ten thousand people. Olomu shares boundaries with the following; On the North with Ughelli and Ogor; On the South with Okparebe, Arhavwarien and Ewu; On the East with Ewu and on the West with Kiagbodo, Jeremi and Ephron-Otor. The Okpare river is the most conspicuous boundary.

Politically, the kingdom is under the Ughelli South Local Area of Delta State, and it is made up of fourteen villages namely: Agbon, Akperhe, Aloba, Ogoni, Oguname, Okpare, Okpavuerhe, Okpe, Ophori, Ophorigbala, Oviri, Ovwodokpokpor, Ovwor and Umolo.

1.3.2 ORIGIN

In tracing the history of any ethnic group, it is not uncommon to encounter contradicting perspective. That of Olomu is not an exception. The origin of Olomu has been for long a subject of disputes. Some historians say they migrated from Ibo while others say they migrated from Benin; though antiquities, investigations, cultural traditions and language shows that they originated from Bini like the rest of the Urhobo Nation.

Olomu collective folk memory holds strongly that founder the kingdom is one ALAKA whose father Ijezue lived at Igban (this is a general Urhobo term for the Ibo country – a part included most of the Ogwashi and Kaale Ibos). Why Alaka left his own clan/country is not known, He finally settled at Otorere-Olomu near Ewu. At this period, the Mein clan of Ijos was already established in its present habitat on the creek system of the Warri-Forcados River, but the Ewu clan had not as yet settled in their present home.

Tradition states that Otorere-Olomu (meaning “the first place of the town – Olomu) became friendly with the town of Kiagbodo of the Mein clan, and that Alaka himself gave his daughter to none Oghoro, the founder of Ngbile (Ngbile is the founder of Kiagbodo, grandson of Mein). Owing to this family ties, Oghoro left Kiagbodo and cast his lot with Alaka, thus Otorere into two main quarters: That of Alaka family known as ‘UHURIE; and that of Oghoro family known as UMUGORO.

According to oral tradition, the people got dissatisfied with their location due to congestion, coupled with the fact that the area was situated in swampy region (about two-miles South East of the present Akperhe-Olomu) thus the whole community migrated in search of better land and finally settled at the new Otorere-Olomu, though some people left and settled at Olomoro near Oleh in the present Isoko South Local Government of Delta State.

This second settlement gradually expanded. It is computed that at the height of its prosperity, it must have covered an area of approximately one third of a square mile. The new settlement however proved to be an unhealthy spot. Tradition says that the people died at a comparatively early age and this, coupled with an outbreak of smallpox that depopulated the town, finally gave rise to the third movement, this time a disintegration of the people and the settlement of various villages.

During the first Otorere-Olomu, a dispute arose over ownership of land with the Ewu people that were newly established in that area. Gorilla-warfare resulted which developed into slave-raiding expeditions. Other crises include the one with Ughelli and Ogor after the second Otorere-Olomu has been established, among others. One of such crises led to the institution of s traditional ruler known as THE OHWORODE OF OLOMU.

The Ohworode (literally BIG MAN) position was created during a period of Inter-clan warfare, when it was found necessary to benefit by the services of a rich and powerful man; who could help considerably with money and advice and who was known and respected by other clans. Under the first three Owhorodes, the clan developed in prosperity and was little troubled by aliens, clans while internal strife was a thing of the past.

The history of Olomu took a higher tempo when Igboze, a son of the Oba of Benin, attempted to usurp the throne of his father, he was marked for execution, when he got wind of it, he escaped from Benin with his household and took refuge with his maternal Uncle in Olomu. Igboze's escape boat capsized at URHUVWARE near Oviri-Olomu and his beloved wife drowned as a result. Upon arrival at Otorere-Olomu, Igboze had an image of his wife made, which he placed in his shrine. The image can still be seen at the Igboze shrine in Agbon-Olomu. Igboze arrived Olomu with his Olorogun Insignia. He also brought with him the knowledge of efficient public and social administration. Igboze began by setting up the OLOROGUN Society - A social, military, executive and judicial institution. This institution trained effective and efficient military, judges and administrators.

A SKETCH MAP OF OLOMU

1.4 LINGUISTICS CLASSIFICATION OF OLOMU DIALECT

Greenberg (1963) provided the most comprehensive and widely accepted genetic classification of Africa Languages. He grouped the languages into four phyla namely: Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Sahara, Khoisan and Niger Kordofonian, which was later renamed Niger-Congo by Heine and Nurse (2000). Urhobo language, which has Olomu as one of its dialect, is a daughter language of Proto-Edoid which belongs to the Niger-Congo phylum. Below is the Edoid family tree diagram according to Yul-Ifode (2001:50) quoting Elugbe (1980).

1.5 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

This study is concerned with the analysis of how words are derived in Olomu dialect of Urhobo. Some processes of word formation will be examined in order to ascertain how the vocabulary of this dialect is expanded to cater for our dynamic culture. Evidence of the occurance of such processes will also be provided.

1.6 AIM OF STUDY

This study is designed to achieve the following aim:

1.To find out the processes of inventing new lexical items in Olomu dialect.

2.To provoke further research work, thus promoting the and culture people of Olomu.

3.To serve as a relevant information as well as a reference material to researchers.

1.7 JUSTIFICATION OF STUDY

Although, many research works have been done on Urhobo morphology in the past especially on the standard dialect and some other dialect, none has been done on the Olomu dialect, hence it is important for this study to be carried out. This study is also important because no language can be studied effectively without a very close look at the structure of its words, which when combined, forms strings of sentences in a discourse. This work will also serve as a reference material.

1.8 SCOPE AND LIMITATION

This work will focus on an aspect of the morphology of Olomu dialect. Attention will be given to only the word formation processes that are prevalent in the dialect. This is as a result of unavailable written materials on the dialect, inadequate time and limited resources. These factors hindered me from doing an extensive research thus limiting the scope of the study to the commonest processes of word formation in the dialect. Theses processes includes: Coinage, Borrowing, Reduplication, Compounding, Affixation, Clipping etc

1.9 METHODOLOGY

Two methods will be employed in the collection of relevant data and information for this work; these are the Primary and Secondary sources of data collection. The primary source will be an oral interview with competent native speakers, while the secondary sources shall include text books, internet materials, encyclopaedias and journals. I shall also employ my intuitive knowledge as a native speaker of the dialect.

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapter, we did an overview of the work. This chapter will focus on a review of related literature on terms and concepts that are relevant to this work. Terminologies such as Morphology, Morpheme, Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes and Word Formation will be examined in details.

2.1 MORPHOLOGY

The creative ability of a language is indicated by the continuous development of the vocabulary of such language. This creative power rest on the field of language study called Morphology. Below are some definitions of Morphology by different scholars.

Bloomfield (1983:184) defines morphology as “the way in which words and meaningful elements are constructed and their function in grammatical system of language”.

Bauer (1983:13) sees Morphology as “the branch of linguistics which deals with the internal structure of word forms”.

Katamba (1990:13) simply said: “Morphology is the study of word structure”.

Napoli (1996:161) says Morphology is “the study of word formation processes”.

Tomori (1997:1) defines Morphology as “the study of the structure of words in a language and the study of the rules governing the formation of words in a language”.

Anagbogu (2001:99) sees Morphology as “the level of grammar that studies the ways morphemes organize themselves to form words”

Akmajian (2001:12) says “Morphology is the subfield of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words”.

Aziza (2007:299) states that Morphology is “the internal structure of words and the rules that govern word formation in a language”.

An analytical look at the various definitions above reveals the fact that Morphology is the level of Linguistics analysis that deals with the internal structure of words and the rules by which words are formed in language.

2.2 THE CONCEPT CALLED MORPHEMES

Morpheme is the smallest unit in morphological analysis which cannot be further broken down without altering its meaning.

According to Bauer (1983:14), Morpheme is the minimal unit of grammatical analysis.

Anagbogu (2001) says that Morpheme is used to refer to the smallest form which has a specific grammatical function.

Aziza (2007:299), Morpheme is the smallest unit of grammar out of which words can be formed.

Nida (1965:79) defines Morpheme as the smallest, indivisible and meaningful unit of a language.

Katamba (1993:20) sees Morpheme as the smallest indivisible unit of semantic content or grammatical function that words are made up of.

The above definition of Morphemes from various Linguist re-affirm the fact that Morpheme is the smallest unit in morphological analysis which cannot be further broken down.

Basically, there are two kinds of Morpheme: The free morpheme and the bound morpheme.

2.2.1 FREE MORPHEME

Free morpheme, also stem, is used to refer to the irreducible core of a word which can stand on its own as a full fledged word. According to Aziza (2007), free morpheme is a “morpheme that can stand by itself, it occurs in isolation without necessarily having to be attached to any other unit”.

Free morpheme falls into two categories namely the lexical morpheme and the functional morpheme. The former consist of Nouns, Adjectives and verbs which are words that carry the content of the message we convey; while the latter consist of Conjunctions, Prepositions, Articles and Pronouns which serves as the functional words in a language. Examples of lexical morphemes are: teach, come, paint etc while those of functional morphemes are: the, and, although etc.

2.2.2 BOUND MORPHEME

Bound morpheme, also affix, refers to that kind of morpheme which cannot occur in isolation. This kind of morpheme must be attached to a grammatical unit to be meaningful. According to Yule (1996), Bound morphemes are morphemes which cannot normally stand alone, but which are typically attached to another form. He further said that “the set of affixes which fall into the bound category can also be divided into two types”, Katamba (1993) also said that this division “reflects a recognition of two principal word building processes: Inflection and Derivation”. Examples of bound morpheme are: -ly as in annually, -ation as in education, un- as in unfriendly, il- as in illegal

2.3 INFLECTIONAL AND DERIVATIONAL MORPHEME

On the differences between Inflectional and Derivational morpheme, Yule (1996) states that “Some morphemes derive (create) new words by either changing the meaning or the part of speech (syntactic category)…other morphemes neither change the part of speech nor meaning but only refine and give extra grammatical information about the already existing word”.