COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF WH-QUESTION MARKERS IN STANDARD YORUBA AND IJESHA DIALECT

Abstract

This paper analyses the significant similarities and differences (Major areas of convergence and disconvergence). In WH-question formation strategies in Ijesa and standard Yoruba. The objectives of the study are to discover the major areas of convergence and divergence between Wh-question formation strategies in Ijesa dialect and standard Yoruba and to identify identical question markers both in Ijesa dialect and standard Yoruba. Adequate and relevant data on basic and derived sentences were collected from adult native speakers of the two speech forms through oral interview and tape recording for the analysis. Leaning on the Government and Binding (GB) as a theoretical framework for data analysis, the study reveals that contrary to what is obtained in standard Yoruba, the attested Wh-question markers in Ijesa dialect are: yesee ‘who’, ki what/which, kabii ‘where’, karugba ‘when’ and kotiiri ‘why’. In terms of syntactic structure, the Wh-question markers in Ijesa dialect lack the peculiar focus particle ‘ni’ that always accompanies Wh-question markers in standard Yoruba. Whenever a subject-NP is questioned at the subject-NP position, the extraction site remained empty in Ijesa dialect, while it is always occupied by a resumption pronoun ‘o’ in standard Yoruba. In addition, whenever an object-NP is questioned in Ijesa dialect, the last vowel of the subject -NP is lengthened.