Igala Grammar

Cultural Information

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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).

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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	Glottal
!	Voiceless	p	t	c	k	q	ʔ (') } 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?). Adjectives and Adverbs Sentence-Final Particles References