ABSTRACT
This study, “A Morphological Analysis of Reduplication in Urhobo,” focuses on morphology, one of the primary fields of linguistics, and examines the concept of reduplication in Urhobo. Finding out what types of reduplication are present in the Urhobo language, how reduplication functions, the word classes that can be reduplicated, and whether reduplication can be utilized as a word formation process in Urhobo were the key goals of this study. The other sub goal of this study was to ascertain if construction morphology can be used to analyse reduplication in Urhobo. Face-to-face interviews with proficient language speakers served as the primary means of gathering data for this study, along with a review of earlier research works on the subject. A qualitative research method is used in the research design. Geert Boorji’s construction morphology (2010) served as the theoretical framework for this investigation. It was determined to be the best framework for this particular research project. Five proficient speakers in all—three men and two women, between the ages of thirty to sixty-five made up the research sample for this project. The information was sorted by lexical groups and presented in tables for a more aesthetically pleasing appearance after being analysed using construction morphology. The study’s conclusions included the following: two types of reduplication exist in Urhobo, namely full and partial, reduplication also serves a number of purposes in Urhobo, including intensification, pluralisation and continuative function, various word classes, including nouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, and adjectives can reduplicate in Urhobo and finally, reduplication is also used to create new words in Urhobo.
