Verb inflectional morphology in Ikwere

Abstract

Although some work has been done on Ikwere verb inflectional morphology, no comprehensive description of this aspect of the language exists. This paper aims at providing a fairly comprehensive description of the verb inflectional morphology of Ikwere, an Igboid language (Niger-Congo) spoken in southern Nigeria. It notes that the marking of inflectional categories of tense, aspect, mood and polarity in Ikwere is a combination of affixes, auxiliaries and tone. The paper identifies -kata and -li as markers of resultative and potential respectively. It also identifies the combination -ká and -lâ as marking emphatic prohibitive, in addition to -rV, -ga, -lV/-nV, -bè, -kọ̀, dè/dà and -V identified by Alerechi (2015), which respectively mark factative/assertive, progressive, perfect, inceptive, habitual, future and prohibitive. The paper further establishes that in addition to root-controlled vowel harmony noted by Alerechi (2007, 2009), affix-controlled vowel harmony is also attested in Ikwere. Finally, the paper demonstrates that although tense, aspect, mood and polarity are different in theory, in practice they criss-cross themselves in verb forms in Ikwere, thus resulting in such combinations as ‘resultative past’ and ‘future potential’.