Department of Language and Linguistics

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Browsing Department of Language and Linguistics by Author "Adegboye, Oluseye Olusegun"

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    X-BAR PERSPECTIVE OF NOMINAL AND PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES IN LONGUDA
    (Department of Languages and Lingustics, Nasarawa State University, Keffi, 2014-07-07) Adegboye, Oluseye Olusegun
    This research undertakes a study of nominal and prepositional phrases of Longuda, a language spoken by about 100,000 people. It is spoken mainly in Guyuk area of Adamawa State, North-East, Nigeria. It belongs to the Adamawa Eastern group of Niger-Congo language family. The research applied Chomsky‟s theory of X-bar as reflected in Carnie (2013). The fieldwork involved eliciting data on nominal and prepositional phrases in the Longuda language. The analysis revealed the syntactic status of nominal phrases (NP) in Longuda by examining its various constituents, its syntactic positions and functions in the language. It was observed that the language has quite a number of constituents embedded in the NP which ranges from different types of determiners to the other phrases that the nominal phrase subcategorizes for in its domain. The determiners include articles, qualifiers, deictics, quantifiers, numerals among others. The syntactic positions of NPs in Longuda include subject (S), direct object (DO) and indirect object (IO) positions. The other phrases embedded in the domain of NPs in Longuda include adjective and prepositional phrases (PP).Longuda syntax manifests the following characteristics:The nouns in Longuda are head first and a single head first or head right generalization rule captures the order of nouns in Longuda. The prepositions in Longuda are head last and a single head last or head right generalization rule captures the order of prepositions in Longuda. The study showed that Chomskyan notion of X-bar is productive in duly accounting for nominal and prepositional phrases in Longuda.