DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF ALAGO PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOPHONOLOGY

This study investigated the sound system and morphophonology of Alago. The inadequacy as well as the discrepancies associated with the earlier studies and pitfalls identified in the inventory of phonemes and other aspects of the phonology of the language motivated the reappraisal of the phonology of the language while the paucity of literature on the interface relationship between the phonology and morphology of the language motivated the description of its morphophonology. Recorded data for the study were elicited from five native speakers of the language using the Roger Blench wordlist of 1017 lexical items as an instalment. The basic principles of Structural Linguistics and Hayes’ (2009) descriptive procedures/methods for morphophonemic analysis and the interlinear morpheme-by- morpheme glossing principles were used for the analysis in keeping with the Leipzig Glossing Rules. The research discovered from the reexamination of its phonology that Alago has 26 consonant phonemes; five nasals /m,n, g, ji, ngm/ , ten plosives /p, b, t, d, k, g, kp, gb, kw, gw/, one affricate /(£/, one trill /r/, six fricatives/f, v, s, z, J, hi , and three approximants /w, 1, j/ and 7 oral vowel phonemes/ i, e, s, o, 0 , a, u, /. The language has three syllable structure types namely: V, CV and N, is a register tone language with three tonemes: high, mid, low and attests phonological processes such as nasalization, vowel elision, two types of glide formation, vowel lengthening and a partial vowel harmony system. The productive morphophonological processes identified include among others, tone suprafixation in lexicalization and effect of tone in plural formation characterized by the process of tone stability premised on the presumption that in the event that suffixation accounts for stress shift in instances such as selective > selectivity in English are considered as morphophonemic, it follows that in tone languages, such phenomena as prefixation which accounts for tone copying and tone stability as occurs in Alago, should equally be treated as morphophonemic. This constitutes the major breakthroughs and thesis of the study. With respect to verbs; tense and aspect are discovered to be lexicalized rather than inflected. The research objectives were achieved as the above findings reveal and contribute to discoveries in African LinguisticsThis study investigated the sound system and morphophonology of Alago. The inadequacy as well as the discrepancies associated with the earlier studies and pitfalls identified in the inventory of phonemes and other aspects of the phonology of the language motivated the reappraisal of the phonology of the language while the paucity of literature on the interface relationship between the phonology and morphology of the language motivated the description of its morphophonology. Recorded data for the study were elicited from five native speakers of the language using the Roger Blench wordlist of 1017 lexical items as an instalment. The basic principles of Structural Linguistics and Hayes’ (2009) descriptive procedures/methods for morphophonemic analysis and the interlinear morpheme-by- morpheme glossing principles were used for the analysis in keeping with the Leipzig Glossing Rules. The research discovered from the reexamination of its phonology that Alago has 26 consonant phonemes; five nasals /m,n, g, ji, ngm/ , ten plosives /p, b, t, d, k, g, kp, gb, kw, gw/, one affricate /(£/, one trill /r/, six fricatives/f, v, s, z, J, hi , and three approximants /w, 1, j/ and 7 oral vowel phonemes/ i, e, s, o, 0 , a, u, /. The language has three syllable structure types namely: V, CV and N, is a register tone language with three tonemes: high, mid, low and attests phonological processes such as nasalization, vowel elision, two types of glide formation, vowel lengthening and a partial vowel harmony system. The productive morphophonological processes identified include among others, tone suprafixation in lexicalization and effect of tone in plural formation characterized by the process of tone stability premised on the presumption that in the event that suffixation accounts for stress shift in instances such as selective > selectivity in English are considered as morphophonemic, it follows that in tone languages, such phenomena as prefixation which accounts for tone copying and tone stability as occurs in Alago, should equally be treated as morphophonemic. This constitutes the major breakthroughs and thesis of the study. With respect to verbs; tense and aspect are discovered to be lexicalized rather than inflected. The research objectives were achieved as the above findings reveal and contribute to discoveries in African Linguistics