Browsing by Author "Makama, Asabe Ezekiel"

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    MADA TONE SYSTEM: A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION
    (Department of Languages and Linguistics, Nasarawa State University, Keffi, 2020-06-17) Samuel, Nuhu Baba; Abraham, David A.; Makama, Asabe Ezekiel
    This paper is a preliminary report on an ongoing research on Mada, a Platoid language spoken predominantly in Nasarawa State and few adjoining states; Kaduna and Plateau states, Nigeria. This paper discusses the phonological feature of tone and its relevance in the phonology of Mada. It examines the structure of tone bearing unit with a view to revealing the possible sequence of tone placement, types and patterns as well as the junctions of tone in Mada. The motivation for this study stems from the fact that tone is contrastive and plays a significant role in determining the pitch-related suprasegmental pattern in the language. The expectation of this paper, however, is to describe tone and tone groups in Mada, hence no appeal is made to a specific theoretical model as this attempt is only a descriptive study. Data for this study was sourced through monolingual, direct elicitation and participant observation methods. The findings show that Mada attests three level tones with the high tone unmarked and two-tone glides - high-low./A/ and low-high /V/ respectively. It further shows that tone in Mada is morphophonemic and highly productive such that pitch variation is capable of initiating contrast in the meaning of lexical items (morphotonemics). Syntactically, this study posits that, tonal contrast has a high functional load in the grammar of Mada. For instance, tone changes a simple declarative sentence to interrogative sentence type, makes a distinction between singular and plural, and changes infinitives to verbal nouns. Therefore, this paper, among other things, document end decipher Mada tone system. We recommend that minority languages be studied and documented to forestall language endangerment.
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    Prefixation as a Derivational Process in Mada
    (DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS FACULTY OF ARTS NASARAWA STATE UNIVERSITY KEFFI, 2021-07-10) Samuel, Nuhu Baba; Makama, Asabe Ezekiel; Garba, Patience Ashesla
    This paper is a preliminary report on an ongoing research on Mada. a minority indigenous Nigerian language spoken in Nasarawa, Kaduna and Plateau states of Nigeria. This present work undertakes a study of prefixation as an aspect of the morphology of Mada by examining the role of prefixes in the derivation of new words in the language. The motivation for this study stems from the fact that Mada has a reduced morphology with scanty literatures available for data-driven analysis in the language, thus a study of prefixation is geared towards documenting this aspect of the morphology of the language through descriptive analysis. However, our focus in this study is to establish the extent of prefixation in creating new words, especially in the formation of agentive (occupational nouns) and plural nouns cushioned on two perspectival premises: derivation and inflection. Ample data were elicited from competent native speakers of Mada for this study. Introspection and the linguistic training of the researchers were employed to collect, collate and analyse available data. It is shown in this study that, the prefix mo-,together with its variants bo- and n-prefix,is used to mark countable nouns whereas the prefixes wan- and ban-, and fo-/vo-acting as pseudo prefixes are used as alternation for persons in the formation of agentive or act as diminutives. The major finding of this study, however, shows that prefixation is the only variety associated with the derivational morphology of Mada and the most widespread.