Igala Grammar

Disclaimer

This wiki is currently under construction. The information on this page stems from the research that began with the field methods class taught at the McGill Department of Linguistics in Winter 2021.

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). Igala is distantly related to other Yoruboid languages.

Spoken by approximately 1,600,020 people (Ethnologue), 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). Igala is distantly related to other Yoruboid languages.

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].

A native (first language) speaker of Igala, recorded herself telling the pear story. The Winter 2021 Field Methods class, transcribed the story based on her recording [2].

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 pʲ b bʲ	t d				k kʷ g gʷ
Nasal	m mʲ		n		ɲ	ŋ ŋʷ
Fricative		f fʲ						h
Affricate				tʃ dʒ
Approximant	w		ɹ		j
Lateral Approximant			l lʲ

As shown above, Igala contains labialized plosives such as /gʷ/ and palatalized plosives such as /lʲ/.

Igala additionally contains the co-articulated phonemes /kp/ 'voiceless labiovelar plosive' and /gb/ 'voiced labiovelar plosive'.

Vowels

According to Ejeba (2016), 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

Syllable Structure

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

The majority of syllables in Igala are open syllables of CV or V form.

There are distributional restrictions on where each syllable can appear. According to Ejeba (2016), CVC form is limited to ideophones. CV can occur word-initially, word-medially, word-finally, or in isolated form. V can occur in all cases except for word medially. Negation in Igala occurs as a syllabic nasal: /n/.

Phonotactics

Vowel Hiatus

From a preliminary overview of Igala, it appears that Igala does not tolerate vowels in hiatus. Resolution usually consists of the deletion of the initial vowel of the VV. Take for example, the following:

(1) ɹɔ ākʷū > [ɹākʷū] ‘cry a cry’
(2) ra ɔ́mɛ̀ > [rɔ́mɛ̀] ‘pay debt’
(3) kɔ uɲi > [kuɲi] ‘build a house’
(4) kpɛ útʃɛ̀ > [kpútʃɛ̀] ‘send message’
(5) wɔ ɛ́dɔ̀ > [wɛ́dɔ̀] ‘get angry (lit. foam heart)’
(6) gba ìlɛ́tà > [gbìlɛ́tà] ‘receive a letter’
(7) du ēdʒū > [dēdʒū] ‘take eye (part of a SVC)’

Note: The deleted vowels are put in bold

The exception to this pattern of deletion is when the initial vowel of the sequence is i, in which case the hiatus becomes diphthongized. In other words, the initial high front vowel becomes a glide and yields a jV string, as seen in the following:

(8) li ɛ > [lʲɛ] ‘see you’
(9) hi odʒe abatʃa > [hʲodʒabatʃa] 'cook cassava morsel'
(10) bi ɔ̌nà> [bʲɔ̌nà] ‘open door’

There are other instances where hiatus is not repaired such as between a subject and aspect marker.

Tone

Main page: Tone

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

In Igala, tones are involved in morphological processes.

Morphosyntax

Igala is a dominantly isolating language.

Morphological Processes

Main Page: Morphological Processes

fV & mV

Main page: fV & mV

tʃɛ/tʃe

The morphemes tʃɛ and tʃe appear as verbal elements in Igala. tʃɛ adds the meaning that something has already been done to a sentence.

ū	gbɔ̋	kàkīnī	ɛ̀	tʃɛ̀	wā	mɛ̂
1SG	hear	C	2SG	already	come	now
‘I heard that you have already come' (D:225).

The morpheme tʃe is a copular element translated as do/does.

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).

In certain cases tʃ(e) seems to note additional emphasis in a situation.

i	tʃe	uwɛ	dʒɛ	ɔda	lɛ	i	n	:
3SG.NEG	do.EMPH	2SG.STR	eat	pear	DEF.DIST	EMPH	NEG.SFP	?
‘Are you not the one who ate the pear?’(D:?).

Negation

...

Nominalization

Main page: Nominalization

In Igala, nominalization occurs with the addition either the morpheme ɛ/e or the morpheme a, as shown in the examples below.

In this example, ido ta alone means 'to dance,' while the additional of the morpheme e gives the nominal meaning 'dancing' to the word.

(1)

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).

(2)

é	n(ɛ)	ɔ́bē	álādì	n(ɛ)	ɔ́bē	kp(a)	ādʒūwɛ̄	lɛ̀
NMLZ	use	alado	use	knife	kill	chicken	DEF.DIST
‘It was the use of knife that aladi used knife to kill the chicken’

Reduplication

(1)

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'.

Verbs & Verb Phrases

Verbs in Igala begin with a consonant.

Verbs

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

The serial verb construction, also known as (verb) serialization or verb stacking, is a syntactic phenomenon in which two or more verbs or verb phrases are strung together in a single clause.

Serial Verb Constructions

Below is an example of a serial verb construction in Igala.

(1)

aladi	kpa	adʒuwɛ	dʒɛ
aladi	kill	chicken	eats
Alali killed and ate the chicken (D:22).

Splitting Verbs

The split verb is a verb that sentence-finally appears as one word, however can be split so part of the verb appears earlier in the sentence.

Below is an example sentence containing a split verb in Igala.

(2)

dorkas	kp	lɛ	ɔna	fɔ
Dorcas	break	door	DEF.DIST	break
Dorcas, break the door!

Cognate Objects

COs are true arguments of their predicate

This is shown by runing tests on the distinction between adjuncts and arguments. One of these tests is the ’do so test’ It shows that in an example like (1), the noun ’dance’ is an argument of the verb ’dance’ because ’do so’ functions as a proform for V’: “when do so is used as a substitute, it must stand for the verb and all its arguments”, (Macfarland 1995:104).

(1a)

ū	t(a)	ídō	(u)jɔ̀	ókō	úbī	mī	ǒchálà	ŋʷɔ̀	tʃ(e)	ǎlɛ̄	gɛ
1SG	dance(V)	dance(N)	cheerful	farm	back	my	Ochala	and	do	so/same	again
'I danced a cheerful dance in my garden and Ochala did so too.'

(1b)

*u

t(a)

ído

(u)jɔ

oko

ubi

mi

Ochala

ŋʷɔ

tʃ(e)

alɛ

ɛdo

dudu/ɛdo

ɛkpabjɛ

1SG

dance(V)

dance(N)

cheerful

farm

back

my

Ochala

and

do

so/same

sad

Intended: I danced a cheerful dance in the garden and Ochala did so a sad dance.

COs can be modified, including in relative clauses

(2)

u	t(a)	ido	k(i)	a	tʃ(e)	ujɔ
1SG	dance(V)	dance(N)	C	IMPF	COP1	cheerful/joy
‘I danced a cheerful dance’

COs in Igala only occur with unergative verbs, and not with unaccusatives

Nouns & Noun Phrases

Nouns in Igala begin with a vowel.

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

(1)

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

Determiners

Indefinite Article

There are usually no indefinite articles in Igala. Optionally (o)ka 'one' an occur after a noun.

(1)

ú lʲ a̅bʲà (o)kǎ n

1SG see dog one NEG

‘I didn’t see one dog.’

Definite Article

In Igala, lɛ acts as a determiner. lɛ seems to have a similar meaning to English's 'the' or 'that.' lɛ is a definite article, not a demonstrative.

An example of lɛ

(2)

ɔnɛkɛlɛ	lɛ	nɛ	imoto
man	DEF.DIST	drive	car
‘The man drove a car.’

In Igala, ji is a definite article. ji is a definite article. It is a proximal (??)

An example of ji.

(3)

tʃɔ́tʃì	jī
church	this
‘This church.’

The determiner follows the head noun:

(3)

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?).

Compounding

...

Multiplier Morpheme

Main page: Multiplier Morpheme

Adjectives and Adverbs

The morphemes mɛ and gɛ in Igala pattern as adverbs.

mɛ

The morpheme mɛ patterns as an adverb meaning now or already depending on the context.

An example of mɛ with the meaning 'now.'

(1)

ma	wa	mɛ
3PL	come	now
‘They are now coming.’

An example of mɛ with the meaning 'already.'

(2)

ū	gbɔ̋	kàkīnī	ɛ̀	tʃɛ̀	wā	mɛ̂
1SG	hear	C	2SG	already	come	already
‘I heard that you have already come.’

gɛ

The morpheme gɛ patterns as an adverb in Igala meaning 'again.'

An example of gɛ.

(3)

a	dabi	ta	ido	gɛ
1PL	turn.back	dance(V)	dance(N)	again
‘We danced again.’

Sentence-Final Particles

More information on Sentence-Final Particles: Sentence-Final Particles

Focus and Topicalization

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