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].

Dorcas Otu, a native (first language) speaker of Igala, recorded herself telling the pear story. The Winter 2021 Field Methods class, transcribed the story based on Dorcas's 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 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

Vowel Deletion

Often, when one word is vowel-final and the next is vowel-initial the final vowel of the first word will be deleted (as shown below).

álādì	t(a)	ídò	f(i)	āgārā	kpà
aladi	dance(V)	dance(N)	PERF1	spider	kill
‘Aladi danced and killed a spider.’

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, thus the languages does not make use of derivational or inflectional affixation.

Nouns in Igala end with a vowel.

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, 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.

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).

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

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

Main page: Verbal Elements

Noun Phrases

Main page: Noun Phrases

Determiners

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

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

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

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.'

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

An example of mɛ with the meaning 'already.'

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.

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

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

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

The lengthening of a sentence final segment seems to be related to question formation in Igala. Most commonly, the final segment is either a vowel or the negational morpheme n.

(1) Sentence with out final lengthening.

ɛ̄	dʒ(ɛ)	ɔ̄dā	ɔ̀nálɛ́
2SG	eat	pear	yesterday
‘You ate a pear yesterday.'

(2) Sentence with final lengthening.

ɛ̄	dʒ(ɛ)	ɔ̄dā	ɔ̀nálɛ́	:
2SG	eat	pear	yesterday	?
‘Did you eat a pear yesterday?'

Numerical System

The Igala language utilizes a base-20 multiplicative system that also includes functions of subtraction and addition. The system has separate morphemes for numerals one to nine, as well as for ten ɛ̀gʷá, twenty ógʷú, fifty ódʒe, and two hundred ɔgwɔkɔ (Ejeba, 2016, p. 105; Otu, personal communication, 2021). For numerals eleven to nineteen, the form is ‘ten’ followed by a number from one through nine (Savkovic 2021).

ɛ̀gʷá	ɛ̀lá
ten	nine
'nineteen' (from Ejeba, 2016, p. 103).

The rest of the numbers are created using multiplication, addition, and/or subtraction. Igala employs “grouping” numbers for 20 ɔ̀gbɔ̀ and 50 ólí, that are separate from the words listed above, to make larger numbers through multiplication (Savkovic 2021).

ɔ̀gbɔ̀	m	ɛ́gʷá	ɛ̀là
twenty	MULT	ten	nine
'380' (from Ejeba, 2016, p. 105).

Savkovic (2021) argues that I argue that the morpheme m acts a multiplier between a noun phrase or a grouping number and a digit between two and nineteen. Additionally, she argues for a syntactic structure that includes m in a functional projection, mP, with NPs on either side as its complements.

àm(a)	ōlí	m	ɛ́tà
PL	tree	MULT	three
'three trees' (D: 386).

Inflection

Aspect

a/ɲa/ja