A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE EGGON NUMERAL SYSTEM

Eggon refers to both the speakers and the language. The language is one of the major indigenous languages spoken in Nasarawa State, North Central Nigeria. The paper presents the linguistic (phonological, morphological and syntactic) analysis of Eggon counting system using descriptive method. Previous works on Eggon numerals, the intuitive knowledge of the language and the writer's training as a linguist, constitute the major sources of data for this paper. The derivation of Eggon numerals involves the use of the basic numbers to derive the secondary numbers using arithmetic principles of addition and multiplication; on the one hand and the linguistic phonological processes of coalescence, tone change, vowel elision and syllabic distribution, morphological processes of null morpheme, compounding and reduplication, and sentential expression, on the other. This study adds to Eggon language data base and linguistic study in