Department of Linguistics

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Browsing Department of Linguistics by Author "OLOSO YESEERA OMONIKE"

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    An exploration of aspects of spatial metaphors in Standard Yoruba
    (University of Ilorin, Nigeria., 2020) OLOSO YESEERA OMONIKE
    Without doubt, meaning plays a central role in language use. However, semantic discourse on the place of metaphors generally, and spatial metaphors specifically, is a polarised one. Using native speaker’s intuition and participant observation as data elicitation tools from spatial metaphors in Standard Yorùbá, this study aligns with the position of cognitive semanticists that metaphors are not extraneous elements in language that require special skills to articulate and/or understand. Hence, this study investigates how native Yorùbá speakers use spatial metaphors as a conceptual process in mapping connections across domains and within domains. The paper is therefore, twofold. The first part takes a look at spatial metaphors and how Yorùbá speakers embed in them, cultural conceptualisations about space which facilitates the mapping of highness and lowness onto non-spatial domains. The nature of this embeddedness is such that equally produces the association of positive and negative images to these spaces respectively. The second part which focuses on a few exceptions to the rule, brings to the fore, instances where spatial metaphors in the Yorùbá Language act quite to the contrary of the general rule. Findings from this study show that spatial metaphors in the Yorùbá Language are part of the general cognition of native speakers for which they require no special knowledge for competence and performance.
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    Standard Yoruba morphological patterns as variation markers of the Nigerian Pidgin English
    (Yoruba: Journal of Yoruba Studies Association of Nigeria. Department of Linguistics and African Languages, University of Ibadan., 2022) OLOSO YESEERA OMONIKE
    The Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE) is a contact language that has the English Language as its superstrate and Nigerian Languages as its substrates. With the former contributing the bulk of its lexicon, this paper seeks to show the influence that the grammar of Nigerian languages, in this case, the Yorùbá Language, has on the structure of the NPE to the extent that the meaning of Yorùbá words have a greater reflection on the compounding patterns of the NPE than that of the English Language. The grammatical influence of the Yorùbá Language on the NPE equally makes it possible for a morphological pattern such as reduplication that is non-existent in the English Language but which exits in the Yorùbá Language, to feature prominently in the grammar of the NPE. Being a descriptive work, this paper seeks to shed light on the points of convergence between the operations of these morphological patterns in the NPE and the Yorùbá Language and the points of divergence between them and the English Language. The paper concludes that the similarity of grammatical structures of the NPE and the Yorùbá Language contributes to its easy acquisition by Yorùbá people in particular and Nigerians in general, when compared with their acquisition of the English Language.