Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0009-3277-5445

Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MA

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics

Committee Chair

Jonah Katz

Committee Member

Sergio Robles-Puente

Committee Member

Sandra Stjepanovic

Abstract

This thesis focuses on how nasals behave in Yoruba-Ijebu Dialect (YID); YID is one of the dialects of the Yoruba language spoken in Nigeria. The main findings of the thesis are in two parts. The first part discusses local nasalization spreading in a YID CV syllable (sequence of a consonant and a vowel). Three local nasalization spreading rules (simplified to two), which are (i) Nasal spreading from an inherent nasal consonant to an adjacent oral vowel, (ii) Nasal spreading from an inherent nasal vowel to an adjacent sonorant consonant, (iii) Oral (-Nas) spreading from an obstruent to adjacent nasal vowels, were observed in YID. The spreading rules show how nasal is not a privative feature in the dialect but a binary feature. The other part of the finding explains syllabic nasals in the YID. This part demonstrates the two different contexts syllabic nasal is derived in the YID as observed in the data. The first context is where there is the deletion of a vowel between a preposition 'ní' and the noun it precedes. The second context involves the deletion of the high vowel of the present progressive marker 'mí' in the YID. In this second context, nasal place assimilation was observed, and efforts were made to analyze this observation using Feature Geometry and the Optimality Theory.

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