ABSTRACT
This study was undertaken to account for derivational morphology in the North Ibie dialect. This work is aimed at analyzing what derivational morphological process exist in the language as well as see how they form words in the language. The motivation of this work is as a result of the dearth in lingustics works in Ibie, so it is to serve as one of the early attempt at documenting morphology of the language. The work adopts the Lexicalist view with its major view on the grammatical information of lexicons it basically focuses on how words are added to the lexicon of the language through derivational processes.
The framework employed for data collection was the descriptive theoretical framework of data analysis, while for the primary data source words elicited from the Ibadan 400 word list, the 1700 SIL comparative African word list where used also some words (nouns, verbs, adjectives) where generated too account for some processes. The researcher made use of structured questioning and unstructured questions were asked as this had to be adjusted some time to fit into the problem in view. Secondary data sources such as journals, textbook, articles and blog posts on electronic media were also consulted
The researcher conducted an oral interview with the help of a sound recorder, he made use of four adult native speakers (three males and one female), who served as language consultant. The data was then carefully observed and analyzed.
The major findings where that oral vowel phonemes in the language could take the shape of nominal prefixes and act as nominalizers, a general categorization of their abstractive, instrumental, agentive and verbal functions, also circumfixation turns out to be one of the most productive tools or derivation. Compounding and reduplication where accounted for as processes of suffixation while borrowing and coinage answered the question of the other word formation process in the language.
Keywords: Derivation, Derivational Morphology , Compounding, Reduplication Suffixation, Coinage, Borrowing.
