Lexicostatistics Comparison of Standard Igbo and Achi Dialect

Abstract

Comparative linguistics is the sub-field of linguistics that compares languages or dialects and tries to find out the differences and similarities that exist among them, using various techniques such as mass comparison, lexicostatistics, reconstruction etc. This study set out to compare the lexicon of standard Igbo and Achi dialect using the lexicostatistic analysis and lexical comparison. Data was collected using simple elicitation method, a prepared checklist culled from Swadesh 200 wordlist was used to elicit data and oral interviews were conducted over the phone to get the Achi equivalent from the Achi consultants, who are natives of Achi. A total of 100 lexical items were analyzed. The study revealed that there is a high level of mutual intelligibility between Standard Igbo and Achi dialect. From the data analyzed, the percentage of lexical items in both dialects that are different is 13%. Also, it was observed that the percentage true cognate of identical lexical items in both dialects is 45%, whereas, the percentage cognate of lexical items that differ in only sound segments is 42%. The percentage cognate of lexical items in both dialects (true cognate and words that differs in sounds) that share a similarity is 87%. It was also revealed that there exist similarities and differences between both varieties but there are more similarities. Therefore, the study establishes that Achi dialect is a variety of the Igbo language with more similarities than differences.