CAUSATIVE VERBS IN IGALA LANGUAGE

ABSTRACT

This work is on causative verbs in Igala language. Causative verbs is a valency increasing operation which introduces a new arguments and causes a change in the state of non-volitional events. This work will be investigating the concept of causativity in Igala verbs and the motivation for this work is based on the fact that Igala has no much work done on it. For the hypothesis of this research, two approaches will be used. A word list and a sentence list in which verbs with causative features will be extracted and for the sentence list, sentences will be generated (sentences with causative verbs) and this list was given to competent Igala speakers for translation, and also materials were gotten online from published materials, journals, articles in regards the language. In the second chapter a review of relevant literature was used. Certain concepts such as verbs and valency was analysed. The internal structure of verbs was also analysed. Previous works related to the study was also examined to tell what has been done in the study as well as the way they carried out their research and finally the results they attained, while the focus of the present study is to investigate the thematic relations as well as to know their arguments. In the third chapter, the theta theory was employed for application to the work at hand since the verb is the core of the sentence and it assigns thematic roles to the argument in the sentence. It was discovered that two types of causatives occur in a sentence with the verb acting as a causer in a sentence. Causativity is a unique language phenomenon; it shows considerable varieties because these verbs change their forms according to the place where they are used. This work will increase the knowledge of the language and make people know more about the Igala language.