Igala Grammar

Cultural Information

Background Information

Igala, known to the Igala people as “àbó ígálâ [àbóogálâ] in their language” is both an ethnic nationality and language (Ẹ̀jẹ̀bá 2016:1). Certain cultural groups such as the Bassa people maintain an Igala identity while other groups such as the Inoma or Ebu do not view themselves as Igala people (Ẹ̀jẹ̀bá 2016:2). These divergent identities result from different historical interactions between these groups and the Igala people of the Kogi State (Ẹ̀jẹ̀bá 2016).

The Igala territory in Kogi State of Nigeria lies east of the state, and the people are in nine Local Government Areas, out of the sixteen in the state. The Igala Local Governments are Ankpa, Bassa, Dekina, Ibaji, Idah, Igalamela/Odolu, Ofu, Olamaboro and Omala. (Ẹ̀jẹ̀bá 2016).

Spoken by approximately 2,000,000 people (Etu 1999 and Omachonu 2000), Igala is one of the nine main languages in Nigeria (Williamson 1990). The name Igala refers to the people as well as their language (Boston 1968, Williamson 1989b, Ukwedeh 1989 and Etu 1999). The Igala language belongs to the New Benue-Congo branch within the Niger-Congo phylum. It is coordinate with such languages as Yoruba, Itsekiri, Igbo, and Idoma. (Ẹ̀jẹ̀bá 2016).

The Pear Story

The Pear Story is a six-minute film that was produced at the University of California at Berkeley in 1975 and shown to speakers of a number of languages, who were asked to tell what happened in it. In the meantime it has been used in a variety of other studies across other languages. The goal has been to present cinematically a series of more or less natural events to multiple viewers, who are then asked to verbalize what they remember. (UCSB Linguistics) [1].

Phonology

The phonology of Igala consists of a mid sized inventory of consonants and vowels. Igala is a tonal language. (Main page: Tone)

Phonological Inventory

Consonants

The consonants in Igala are given below.

Igala Consonant Phonemes

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Co-articulated velar labial	Glottal
Plosive	p b	t d				k g
Nasal	m		n		ɲ	ŋ
Fricative								h
Affricate				tʃ dʒ
Approximant	w		ɹ	tʃ dʒ	j
Lateral Approximant			l

Vowels

According to Ejeba, there are seven vowels in Igala. The vowels in Igala are given below.

Igala Vowel Phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	ɛ e		o ɔ
Low	a

Phonotactics

Syllables in Igala are in the form V, VC, or CVC. The maximal syllable in Igala is CVC.

There are distributional restrictions on where each syllable can appear. CVC can only occur in isolated form. CV can occur word-initially, word-medially, word-finally, or in isolated form. V can occur in all cases except for word medially.

Vowel Hiatus

Tone

Main page: Tone

There are four ?? tones (Low (à), Mid (ā), High (á), and Super High (a̋) are the ?? tones) and two contour tones (Falling (ǎ) and Rising (â)).

In Igala tones are involved in morphological processes.

Morphology

Igala is a dominantly isolating language. Igala does not make use of derivational or inflectional affixation.

Nouns

Main page: Noun Phrases

Plural Nouns

In Igala, the morpheme àma pluralizes an animate noun. An example of noun pluralization in Igala is shown below.

ū	tʃě	n(ɛ)	ám(a)	ēwú
1SG	do	have	PL	goat
‘I have goats’ (D:4).

Nominalization

In Igala, nominalization occurs with the addition either the morpheme ɛ/e or the morpheme a.

ido	e	ta	tʃe	ɛŋʷu	ɔla	mi
dance(N)	NMLZ	dance(V)	do	thing	body	1SG.OBJ
‘Dancing is my favorite thing (to do)' (D:193).

Reduplication

imɔtɔ	onɛkɛlɛ	lɛ	rulɛ	ti	itʃekbulu	jè	jè	jè	jè
young boy	DEF.DIST	run(V)	run(N)	to	school	slowly	slowly	slowly	slowly
‘The young boy ran to school very slowly’ (D:10).

Syntax

Igala is a largely head-initial language. The basic word order of Igala is SVO (subject verb object)

Verb Phrases

Main page: Verb Phrases

Igala has multiple verb phrase constructions, such as serial verb constructions, split verbs, and cognate objects.

Verbal Elements

tʃɛ/tʃe

fV/mv

Aspect

a/ɲa/ja

Noun Phrases

Main page: Noun Phrases

The determiner follows the head noun:

ɔ̋nɛ́kɛ̄lɛ́	l(ɛ)	a̋	f(a)	ītébùlù	lɛ́	ī:
man	DEF.DIST	IPFV	pull	table	DEF.DIST	EMPH
What does this sentence mean?

Personal Pronouns

The citation forms of Igala personal pronouns are on initial low and final mid tones for subjects/objects, and on initial rising and final mid tones for genitive pronouns. In discourse reference however, cliticized forms of the subject, object and genitive pronouns are used. The genitive pronouns are formed from the sequence of the genitive clitic and any of the pronominal genitive clitics – ordered as genitive Clitic+ Pronominal genitive clitic combination. (Ẹ̀jẹ̀bá 2016).

Personal Pronouns

Person	Number	Personal Pronouns	Gloss	Subject Clitics	Gloss	Object Clitics	Gloss
1st	Singular, Plural	omi, awa	'I/me', 'we/us'	u, a	'I', 'we'	mi, wa	'me', 'us'
2nd	Singular, Plural	uwɛ, amɛ	'you(sg)', 'you(pl)'	ɛ, mɛ	'you(sg)', 'you(pl)'	ɛ, mɛ	'you(sg)', 'you(pl)'
3rd	Singular, Plural	oŋʷu, ama	'she/he/it/her/him', 'they/them'	i, ma	'she/he/it', 'they'	U, ma	'she/he/it'/'them'
Non-Person	Non-Number	~	~	V	~	~	~

Possessives

Possession is not morphologically marked (although may be marked tonally?).

Adjectives and Adverbs

mɛ

gɛ

Sentence-Final Particles

As described in Simpson, sentence final particles are “phonologically small elements, most frequently monosyllabic, which typically (and in most instances must) occur in final position.” Prior studies of the structural position of SFPs in Mandarin, Vietnamese, and Niger-Congo languages have observed SFPs are head-final elements sentence-finally in otherwise head-initial languages (Paul). This observation challenges the Final-over-Final constraint, first proposed by Holmberg in the year 2000. The FOFC states that a head-initial XP cannot be dominated by a head-final VP.

Negation

Negation in Igala is an example of a Sentence-Final Particle. The negational morpheme n appears only sentence-finally in Igala. The negational morpheme cannot refer solely to an embedded sentence.

Example of Negation:

ű	h(i)	ɔ̀dʒ(e)	àbátʃà	ŋ̌
1SG	cook	morsel	cassava	NEG
‘I didn't cook mashed cassava’ (D:734).

Questions

Final Lengthening