Clitichood in Igbo Language: A Re-examination

Abstract

The true nature of clitics in Igbo sometimes becomes challenging. This study subjects already identified clitics in Igbo to the test of clitichood using basic linguistic theory. Data for the study are restricted to secondary source which comprises published works on Igbo clitics. Typologically, there are simple and special clitics. Judging by the position of their attachment to hosts; there are proclitics, mesoclitics and enclitics. Their determined occurrence is not constrained by any phonological environment of their host. In situations where they co-occur with affixes, they are attached closer to the verb-root than the affixes. There sequence of four to five clitic clusters is possible in the Igbo language. The study supports the view that Igbo clitics can take prepositions as their host which some previous studies disagree with. Our findings show that classifying Igbo clitic types in accordance to whether they are positioned closer to the subject or object as subject clitic and object clitic (Anagbogu 2001) is quite misleading. Secondly, clitics in Igbo precede suffixes and that is the situation that accounts for the mesoclitics. The usage of ‘kwa’ as quantitative marker by Nweze (2011), does not comply with the characteristic nature of clitic. We therefore conclude that because a lexical item can function as a clitic does not mean that it can function as clitic in all situations.