ASPECTS OF PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN IGALA

This research is an examination of aspects of the phonological processes, syllable structure, and tone in the central dialect of Igala. The methods for data collection were through oral interviews, participant observation method by the researcher; and the use of "Ibadan Word list of 400 basic Items". Via oral interview the following are observed: phonological processes such as assimilation and delision occur mostly in fast speech in the language. Besides, consonant cluster is not attested in the central dialect of Igala, consequently, vowel insertion is used to break the prohibited sequences in words loaned from other languages; this is done to make them conform to the phonological rules of Igala. Furthermore, an open syllable structure system appears to operate in the language and so, consonants are barred from occurring at the word final position, except the syllabic nasal /rj/ that can appear at the word final positions of words such as eun [suij] 'thing', ujeun [uc^suij] 'meal', un [uq] ‘him/ ‘her’, etc. Nouns are predominantly vowel initial end final, while verbs are mainly consonant initial and vowel final. Finally, suprasegmentcl features such as tone plays a significant role in meaning variations, both at word and sentence levels. They are equally used to change one lexical item from one grammatical class to the other and from one tense to the other in the language. viii