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Types of Word Junction in Yoruba

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

E. C. Rowlands
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Extract

European students of Yoruba are usually slow in learning to understand the spoken language because, apart from having to grapple with the unfamiliar phenomenon of tone, they often find it difficult at first hearing to recognize in medial position words with which they have become quite familiar when occurring initially or finally. This is due to the frequent occurrence of junction situations where a word with vowel final1 is in close syntactic relationship with a following word which, in its isolated form, has a vowel initial, resulting sometimes in the elision of one or other of the vowels in contact, sometimes in an assimilation of one vowel to the other, and sometimes in each vowel retaining its identity. The tones of the junction syllables may also be elided or modified. The European, with his literate approach to language study, is further handicapped by the anomalies of the accepted orthography, which in some cases indicates the junction phenomena and ignores them in others. An added complication is that in many Yoruba books it is hard to find two consecutive pages which are consistent in maintaining the same set of anomalies. This means that, while in some cases the orthography provides a sufficient clue to the pronunciation of a word, in other cases a word cannot be correctly pronounced without reference to the surrounding words and without a detailed knowledge of the usages of the language.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , June 1954 , pp. 376 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1954

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References

page 376 note 1 The only Yoruba words which do not have vowel finals are a few with syllabic nasal final, e.g. n, m, ng (unemphatic pronoun, 1st pers. singular), and bambam (phonæsthetic particle qualifying yó, ‘ be replete ’). This last has a variant bamubamu. Vowel finals may be any of the oral vowels a, e, ẹ, i, o, ọ, u, or of the nasalized vowels an, ẹn, in, ọn, un. (For the values of these letters see Ward, I. C., An Introduction to the Yoruba Language, Heffer, 1952.)Google Scholar

page 376 note 2 Collier, F. S., ‘ Yoruba Hunters' Salutes ’, The Nigerian Field, 04, 1953.Google Scholar

page 377 note 1 The only previous treatment of some of these junction phenomena is in Ward, op. cit., chapter xi, ‘ Abbreviations and Elisions ’, which does not claim to be systematic or exhaustive.

page 377 note 2 A Dictionary of the Yorvba Language, 1937, second impression (O.U.P.), 1950.

page 377 note 3 The romanized forms in parentheses are intended to give a more accurate idea of thepronunciation in cases where the orthography is defective. Long vowels are indicated by doubling. Orthographic word divisions are not observed; spacing indicates a pause. The figures 1, 2, 3 above a letter indicate low, mid, and high tone respectively. 2a and 3a indicate the realizations of mid and high tone after low tone, when the immediately preceding tone mark is other than a low tone (see below, D.). Two numbers over a letter indicate a change of tone on that syllable.

page 378 note 1 op. cit., page 55.

page 379 note 1 Ward, op. cit., page 34.

page 380 note 1 op. cit., page 64.

page 380 note 2 op. cit., page 78.

page 381 note 1 For the forms of the pronouns see Ward, op. cit., p. 79.

page 383 note 1 See examples in Ward, op. cit., p. 9.

page 384 note 1 Ọbasa, D. A., Iwe awọn Akewi, Ilarẹ Press, Ibadan, 1933.Google Scholar

page 385 note 1 op. cit., p. 46, also Melzian, ,‘ Verwendung der Töne in der Yoruba-Sprache ’, in Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen, 1934, p. 215.Google Scholar

page 386 note 1 For examples, see Ward, op. cit., p. 170.

page 387 note 1 For further examples, see Ward, op. cit., p. 116, where an exception to the high tone of the extra mora is recorded for the word lọ.

page 387 note 2 op. cit., p. 84.