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Dissertation Information
| Title: | Tense and Aspect in the Mòfòlí Dialect of Yorùbá | Add Dissertation |
| Author: | Felix Fábùnmi | Update Dissertation |
| Email: | click here to access email | |
| Institution: | Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, African Languages and Literatures | |
| Completed in: | 2006 | |
| Linguistic Subfield(s): | Morphology; Syntax; | |
| Subject Language(s): |
Yoruba
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| Director(s): | ||
| Abstract: | This study examined the syntax of tense and aspect system of Mòfòlí, a dialect of Yorùbá, spoken in the Plateau State of the Republic of Bénin. It also illustrated various forms of interpretations that could be adduced to tense and aspect in the context of the Mòfòlí linguistic communication milieu and contrasted them with what obtained in the Standard Yorùbá. This contrastive effort was with a view to examining the question of the sensitivity or otherwise of Mòfòlí verbs to specific aspectual and tense notions, an issue that had been a subject of contention among the Yorùbá scholars. The research methodology involved collection of data through oral interviews with about forty native speakers of the Mòfòlí dialect whose age bracket ranged between twenty-five and eighty-four. This is with a view to be able to sample people of varying age-grades, and randomly sample within the dialectal area of Mòfòlí. This was supported by Ibadan 400-wordlist and a set of relevant self-generated questions. Library and archival researches which provided the requisite review of literature on the grammatical formatives in Yorùbá were also used. The analysis of data was carried out within the theoretical framework of Government and Binding (GB). The finding showed that the interpretation of tense and aspect of some forms of the Mòfòlí verbs could reflect the notion of events, points of reference and moments of speech, which could ultimately instantiate the binarity of future/non-future for tense and perfect/non-perfect for aspect. The markers involved in the standard Yorùbá were á/yóò/óò/ó/máa (neutra), á máa (imperfective progressive aspect), á máa/ma máa (imperfective habitual aspect), á ti máa/ti ma máa (perfective aspect continuous), á ti/ó ti/ti máa (perfective aspect past), ń (progressive aspect); while those of the Mòfòlí were á / mée (neutra), í mée (imperfective progressive aspect), éé mée (imperfective habitual aspect), í ti mée /éé ti mée (perfective aspect beginning), à ti/ti mée (perfective aspect ending) and ín/ń (progressive aspect). The study also found that temporal order was a fundamental tool for the notion and identification of tense and aspect. Thus, the study was able to demystify a number of key syntactic misconceptions hitherto associated with Yorùbá tense and aspect. For instance, it was discovered that the controversies on the sources and status of the syllabic nasal, which also marks the progressive aspect, were unnecessary because the inherent forms of ń in Mòfòlí pointed to their proto status. In addition, the study showed that tense in standard Yorùbá and Mòfòlí is not synonymous with a morphological representation of the opposition present-past; and that an across-the-board morphological application of the implications of the analysis of tense and aspect to Mòfòlí (as in English) will invariably lead to syntactic inaccuracy. The study concluded that although tense was not overtly marked in Mòfòlí, time reference was sometimes lexicalized by the use of deictic adverbials. |
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