TONE AND ASPECTS OF GRAMMAR IN ÓSÓSỌ̀, EDO, NIGERIA

Abstract

Tone performs lexical and grammatical functions in language. Extant studies on Edoid languagesconfirm this in noun and verb phrases. These works have, however, not included North Central Edoid languages like Ósósọ̀. This study was, therefore, designed to investigate the form, interaction and functional load of tone in the grammar of Ósósọ̀ with a view to situatingÓsósọ̀ within the context of the Edoid tone system typology.

John Goldsmith’s AutosegmentalTheory and Elizabeth Selkirk’s Phonology-Syntax interface model were adopted as the framework, while the ethnographic design was used. Fifty-one speakers (24 female and 27 male)between the ages of 18 and 85 were purposively selected based on community-acclaimed proficiency. Data comprised 21 hours of digital audio recording consisting 19 stories, 10 narratives, 18 Ibadan Syntactic Paradigm elicitations and two focus group discussion sessions with the elderly. Others were vocabulary elicitation using the Ibadan 400 Wordlist and the West Africa Language Data Sheet. Syntactic data were inter-linearly glossed, while tonal data were pitch – tracked. Data were subjected to acoustic and phono-syntactic analyses.

Ósósọ̀ is a discrete level tone language with two basic tones, High and Low. There is a downstep!H tone at the phonetic level. A terrace pitch melody stem from this downstep phenomenon. Contour tones are derived from underlying sequences of the basic tones. Tonal processes manifest downdrift, downglide, low tone raising, and high tone lowering. Tone has a high grammatical functional load in the Ósósọ̀ noun phrase. In the inalienable Noun+ Noun associative construction (AC), possession is marked by the high tomorph/òwὲ ὲkà / → /òwὲ ˊ ὲkà / → /òwØˊ ὲkà/ → [ówὲkà] ‘monkey’s leg’. In alienable AC, the tomorph, segmentalised on the vowel of the morpheme /mi/, is set afloat following hiatus resolution, the tomorph then spreads to the head noun, delinking its low /ὲxà mí òʤó/ → /ὲxà mØˊ òʤó/ →/έxá m ˊ òʤó/ → [έxámòʤó] ‘Ojo’s monkey’. Tomorph is also significant in Noun +Descriptive but not in Noun + Demonstrative/Numeral construction. As verb compliment and in recursive AC the tomorph is equally distinct: /òʧì àdɔ̀ ὲxà/ → /òʧì ́ àdɔ̀ ́ ὲxà/ → /óʧí́ádὲxà/ ‘monkey meat market’. It is also significant in the head noun of a relative clause /ìkù ókɔ̀fɔ̀ ójí mí dὲ/→ /́ìkù ́ ókɔ̀fɔ̀̀ ́ ójí mí dὲ/→ /íkú ókɔ́fɔ̀́ ójí mí dὲ/ ‘the cough medicine that I bought’. In contradistinction, within the verb phrase, tone plays mainly a lexical role on grammatical markers. Unlike established Edoid patterns, the present tense in Ósósọ̀ is marked with /í/, the future /jǎ/ and the past is not overt. In polarquestionsthere is an intonational rising contour at the sentence final position.

Ósósọ̀ operates a two-tone terrace system with a high grammatical load in the noun phrase, but not in the verb phrase. Thus, the grammatical tonal typology of Ósósọ̀ isdivergent from extant Edoid patterns.