Phonological patterning of words of Ogidi dialect and Standard Igbo

Abstract

The Igbo language is multi-dialected. It comprises many varieties but among all, the standard Igbo has been universally accepted by the native speakers of the language to be used in education and for wider communication throughout the Igbo speaking areas of the nation. Many varieties of the Igbo language differ in sounds and sound patterning. This paper investigates the differences in the phonological patterning of lexical words in Ogidi variant of Igbo and standard Igbo using the Comparative Method as the theoretical framework, and the descriptive approach to data analysis. This phonological patterning would sometimes involve the alternation of the standard Igbo /s/, /r/ and /w/ with /ts/, /l/ and /b/respectively in the Ogidi variant. The paper tries to find out in what words such alternation occurs. Among other things, it discovers that the standard Igbo /s/ is not found in Ogidi-Igbo, and so, the dialect substitutes it with /ts/ which is found as the closest-match phoneme for /s/ in Ogidi. For /r/ and /l/phonemes, they are observed to be in free variation in most words, though with few exceptions in words like á»Ìrị̀à 'sickness', rịÌá»Ì 'beg/plea' and ụ̀rịÌá»Ìm̄  'a sign made by hand in rejection of evil'. Then, the substitution of standard Igbo /w/ with /b/ in the Ogidi-Igbo occurs most times, but not entirely, mainly in words containing the inceptive extensional suffix -we/-wa 'start/begin to'.