Igala Grammar

Cultural 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 Pear Story

Phonology

The phonology of Igala consists of a mid sized inventory of consonants and vowels. Igala is a tonal language.

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

Morphology

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

Nominalization

Reduplication

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.

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	Q.EMPH
What	does	this	mean	Zoe :)

Possessives

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

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.

Example of Negation:

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