Grammaticalization of Comitative Markers in Igbo

Abstract

Cross-linguistic studies have revealed that there are other ways to code the meaning of accompaniment conveyed by the comitative marker outside the morphological marking of nouns in languages (such as Basque) to designate persons or entities in whose company an event occurs. In languages lacking morphological case, comitative expressions are conveyed through alternative means, including adjectives, verbs, "with" prepositions, and "and" conjuctions. Onuoha and Uchechukwu (2023) have studied the verbs "-so, and the verbal suffix "-kò?" as comitative markers in Igbo. This paper is a descriptive study, interested in demonstrating that these comitative markers serve more grammatical function inherently without losing their comitative function. The analysis identifies the Igbo comitative markers as grammatical number markers.