NOMINALIZATION IN IKA

ABSTRACT

The aim of the study was to describe the nominalization processes of Ika. The objectives of the study were to examine the noun formation processes; explore morphological strategies/processes of nominalization; identify and analyse the syntactic structure of nominalization and to ascertain semantic implication of nominalization processes in Ika dialect. This work was essentially descriptive linguistic approach. The analysis is not based on any formal theoretical framework. The primary data was drawn from five native speakers (three males and two females) of Ika dialect. Each speaker produced a minimum of 20 utterances which were recorded and transcribed. Nominalization features were identified through manual sorting as the method gave accuracy to the study. The data was analyzed using the descriptive method of Leipzig glossing rules. The study found that; noun formation processes in Ika follow the general rules and principles that govern word formation process; Morphological processes of nominalization that were found in Ika are: affixation (prefixation and interfixation), compounding, gerundives and reduplication; the syntactic forms and structures identified in the work are sentential nouns; nouns formed from sentence, proper nouns are formed by contracting them into single nouns (personal nouns) amongst others; and in the realization of the Ika nominals meaning of words, phrases, sentences are not retained in the dialect.