-
Aspects Of Adim Phonology
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
Page 4 of 4
-
-
-
1.6 Distinctive Features
Distinctive
features are “sets of [articulatory and acoustic] features sufficient
to define and distinguish one from the other, the great majority of
speech sounds used in the languages of the world â€(Halle and Clement
1983:6). The theory of phonological features is concerned with the
discovery of generalization about the phonological behavior of
phonological segment, both in isolation, in sequence or as a member of a
system. There are two major criteria that potential features must meet
to be admitted as distinctive features, they are:
(i) Phonetic Specific ability
(ii) Morphophonemic relevance (Oyebade, 1998:25)
The
features are used in describing all linguistic phenomena occurring in
languages. Some of the features are: labial, anterior, nasal and
syllabic.
1.7 Data Collection
The data for this research
work was collected through the help of language helper (informant
method). The 400 wordlist of basic items was used for this exercise. We
also used the frame technique. This is a template that shows different
structural position which a word can occur. This goes beyond looking at
words in isolation. It was used to get relevant information that cannot
be gotten by means of lexical items only. Thus, it helped in making
illuminating significant generalization. The information concerning the
informant in this research is given below:
NAME:Mr. Edet Usánì Éyòng
ADDRESS: Sam Ethan Air force Base, Ikeja, Lagos.
RELIGON: Christianity
OCCUPATION:Air force
LANGUAGE SPOKEN: Adim
MARITAL STATUS: Married
AGE: 51 Years
YEARS LIVED IN ADIM TOWN: 20/21 Years
1.8 Data Analysis
With
the view of capturing linguistically significant generation in the
language, the analysis of the corpus will be carried out by transcribing
the entire linguistic corpus collected accurately in order to discover
the sounds that are attested in the language in addition to some other
supra-segmental features in the language. This data will be organized to
bring out all inventories of the distinctive phonemes and their
features.
The classification of this data can be done through parts
of speech, nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, pronouns,
determiners and conjunctions found in Adim language.
The
distribution of the data is also determined alongside the syllable
structure,tonal processes and also the phonological processes.
1.9 Genetic Classification
.
These similarities are either phonetically, phonologically,
semantically or syntactically. The genetic classification of languages
makes two things obvious; that language are indeed related to each other
i.e they share the same ancestor and how these languages are
interrelated are shown in the form of a branching diagram.
Adim language is a Cross-river language which is a Benue-Congo language
family under Niger-Congo language family.Genetic classification is the
grouping of languages into families based on shared similarities in
their features.
NIGER -KORDOFANIAN
Niger- Congo Kordofanian
Mande Gur Kwa Adamawa Benue CongoWest Atlantic
BantuPlateau Benue CongoCross- River Jokonous Benue Congo
Cross River Delta CrossUpper CrossLower Cross
έkónì Yakkur Idómì Adim
Source: Greenberg (1970:306) and Kenneth Katzner (1995: 7)
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
Page 4 of 4
-
