The book establishes 28 phonemic consonants and 7 vowels, as well as lexical and grammatical tones in Igala. It shows the canonical syllable types as V and CV with no complexity, and relates resyllabification to the retiming of segments as tone bearing units and the duration of their mora. The work discusses nine word classes, as well as ideophones and clitics in Igala. There are splitting verbs of various structures and fully-fledged pronouns with morphologically toneless clitic counterparts that are toned in their syntactic context, among other elements of the Igala morphology. The work establishes clitics as generally bearing the grammatical tones of various categories as a result of their morphological tonelessness and their availability for post-lexical tone assignment. It also accounts for the generally complex interaction of clitics and tones in the organisation of the morphosyntax and the tone-syntax interface. Igala has both verbal and nominal extensional affixes with various semantic features. Some interesting discussions in the Igala syntax include the structural and functional types of serial verb constructions, the detransitivizing process of verb movement in object demoting structures, coreferentiality in relativised constituents and the future/non-future temporal distinction. Complementary binominals are conjoined with a specified binominal morpheme, and their rigidly irreversible structures have implications in the Igala semantics. The binominals demonstrate a grammatically specified pattern defined over a conceptual space, showing the network among conceptual categories, such as kinship, marital, social, hunter-hunted, more-less and cause-effect relationships as reflected in the Igala grammar.

Tone is a central element in the analysis of tone languages, an example of which is Igala, a New Benue-Congo language of Nigeria. Igala has high, mid and low basic tones lexically, as well as the downstepped and the extra high tone operational in the syntax. Whereas independent words are fully toned lexically, tone is assigned to clitics only in syntactic positions, to express functional sentence positions; for tense, aspect, mood and negation marking on subject clitics; and to specify the semantic role of particularly non-pronominal enclitics in Igala. Tone assignment also dominates functional distinction of sentences. And, adjacent words in Igala portray interesting patterns of tonal modification. There is further a rich demonstration of changes in quality and behaviour of Igala tones, particularly the basic lexical tones, in the environment where tone bearing units are juxtaposed for the formation of new words and for phrasal expressions, this small but highly significant element playing the role of an arbiter in the judgment of word formation versus mere juxtaposition of words in Igala. It thus appears that no adequate description of Igala is possible without recourse to tone

Ígálá language, which is spoken in parts of Kògí, Énúgu, Ánámbra, Delta and Bénúé States of Nigeria, is one of the world’s increasingly endangered languages. Unless something changes soon, it will be lost forever. John Idakwoji spent more than thirty years researching the language so that he could share with the world its oceanic depth and the sacred, unique but under-exploited culture that it nurtures even in its seldom written, rarely described and sparsely documented state of being. The book takes the bull by the horns, as it equips Igala teachers and students with the tools they need to engage in practical learning and instruction. You’ll find: insights on the properties and characteristics of the language, including its alphabet, tones, grammar, parts of speech, dialects, loan-words, and more. features of the lexicon and how readers can recognize and use vocabulary. over five thousand head-words presented in alphabetical order and bearing diacritical marks, phonetic symbols, and tone marks to enable interested non-Igalas to read the book. Research-based information on Igala’s prehistoric origins and the three successive dynasties that have ruled the land bring a personal touch to the lexicon. There is a desperate need and a vociferous call for Ígáláà to be preserved, and An Ígálá-English Lexicon answers that clarion call with an impressive trove of data, analysis, and documentation.

The papers in this collection present the numeral systems of more than twenty Nigerian languages. The papers mainly emanate from a workshop on the numeral systems of Nigerian languages organised by the Linguistic Association of Nigeria during its 23rd Annual Conference which was held at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The workshop arose from awareness created by Dr. Eugene S.L. Chan on the need for Nigerian linguists to document this severely endangered but very important aspect of natural languages. The quantum of mathematical computations - addition, multiplication, subtraction, or a combination of two or all of these - involved in the numeral systems of Nigerian languages is remarkable. The papers reveal that a variety of numeral systems do exist, such as: binary, decimal, incomplete decimal, duodecimal, quinary, quaternary, ternary, mixed, body-part tally systems, and much more. The book is a resource about how different languages manipulate their numeral systems.

This book is a convergence of heterogeneous insights (from languages and literature, history, music, media and communications, computer science and information studies) which previously went their separate ways; now unified under a single framework for the purpose of preserving a unique heritage, the language. In a growing society like ours, description and documentation of human and scientific evidence/resources are improving. However, these resources have enjoyed cost-effective solutions for Western languages but are yet to flourish for African tone languages. By situating discussions around a universe of discourse, sufficient to engender cross-border interactions within the African context, this book shall break a dichotomy of challenges on adaptive processes required to unify resources to assist the development of modern solutions for the African domain.

Lavukaleve is a Papuan Language spoken on the Russell Islands in the Central Province of the Solomon Islands. The phonology and morpho-phonology of Lavukaleve are described, as well as arguments adjuncts, the Lavukaleve predicate structure (including predicate types and core participant marking, the agreement suffix, focus constructions, tense, aspect and mood, word-level derivation, complex predicates), interclausal syntax, and the Lavukaleve discourse organisation. The book includes a list of affixes, a list of lexemes, and an appendix with Lavukaleve texts. The data used in this work was collected by the author during five field trips.

In twenty-five chapters this book covers phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. The chapters are organized in four discrete parts: phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. They are uneven in terms of scope covered, length, the density of their contents and their degrees of difficulty. Each chapter ends with ‘Some References’ relevant to both the topic(s) treated in the chapter, in Igbo linguistics, and in general linguistics.