1.
Establishing Syntactic Categories In
Yorùbá
In
Oyelaran (1976), the author presents what he regards as the criteria that could
be used in classifying words into categories. Meaning, according to him, is one
of the criteria used by some grammarian to classify words into categories and
this is why they say that a noun is the name of any person, place or thing.
But, in his opinion, any grammarians who subscribes to the definition above
will find it very difficult to classify the following words as nouns:
(1) (a) Ọ̀pọ̀
‘many/cheap’
(b) Ọ̀wọ́n
‘dear’
(c)
Ìyà ‘suffering’
Although, none
of these words is either a name of a person, place or thing, each of them can
be used as a noun as follows.
(2) (a)
Ó ra ọjà náà ní ọ̀pọ̀
He buy good the in cheap
‘He bought the goods
cheap’
(b) Ó
ra ọjà náà ní ọ̀wọ́n
He buy good the in dear
He bought the goods dear
(i.e. the goods were expensive)
(c) Ìyà ń jẹ ẹ́
Suffering is eating him
‘He is suffering’
In (2a and b), ọ̀pọ̀ ‘many/cheap’ and ọ̀wọ́n ‘dear’ are objects of the
preposition ní while ìyà ‘suffering’ is the subject of the
sentence, thus, they can be classified as NP or N. Oyèláran (1976:1) wonders
again how one can classify (3a) and (3b) as different categories using meaning
as the criterion:
(3a) (3b)
Ọ̀pọ̀ ‘many’ pọ̀
‘many’
Ọ̀bùn
‘to be dirty’ dọ̀tí
‘to be dirty’
The
other criterion is the one based on phonology for the classification of Yoruba words.
With this criterion, it may be claimed that Yorùbá verbs are usually
monosyllabic (Oyèláran 1976:2). This criterion will classify such word as gbọ́ ‘to hear’ and wá ‘to come’ as verbs but it will
exclude all the italicised words in (4) as verbs
(4)
(a) Ó
ń wàhálà mi
He PROG bother me
‘He is bothering me’
(b) Olówó gẹlẹtẹ
Rich stay idle
‘The rich stays idle’
Another
claim, while using phonology as a criterion, could be that a vowel does not
occur at the initial position of a Yoruba
verb. Even if this is true, it does not follow that all words with
consonants at their initial positions are verbs as shown by the following words
– kí ‘that’ and kìnìún ‘lion’. It can also not be said that all vowel initialed
words are nouns. The following are words which are vowel initialed which are
not nouns – àfi ‘except’ and àti ‘and’
Morphological
criterion, in Oyelaran’s (1976:2) opinion, cannot also be used to classify
Yorùbá words into categories especially as Yoruba does not have inflectional
morphemes to mark gender, tense and case. Number and person are marked in the
language only in the pronouns.
The
function of a word in a sentence is the only criterion that Oyelaran (1976:4) says
can be successfully used to classify Yoruba words into categories. With this
criterion, any word that can serve as either the subject of a sentence or the
object of a verb or a preposition in a sentence, among other criteria, is a
noun. With this criterion, all the italicised words in (5) are nouns.
(5) (a)
Olú
ra iṣu
Olú buy yan
‘Olú bought yams’
(b)
Mo rí Olú ní Ọjà
I see Olú in market
‘I saw Olú in the market’
In
(5a), Olú is the subject of the
sentence while iṣu ‘yam’ is the
object. In (5b), ọjà ‘market’ is the
object of the preposition ni ‘in’.
2. The Subclasification
of Yoruba Versbs by Awobuluyi (1978).
There is no denying the fact that
Awobuluyi (1978) subscribes to the criterion of function that Oyelaran (1976)
claims is the most appropriate for classifying Yoruba words into categories.
Awobuluyi (1978:4) states in part that
The only proper way to classify Yoruba words for syntactic purposes is by
the functions that they actually perform in sentences.
He then goes on
to define a noun as any word functioning as the subject of a verb or the object
of a verb or preposition in a grammatical sentence in the language (Awobuluyi
1978:7). He defines a verb as ‘any word functioning as predicator in a
grammatical or acceptable sentence in the language’ (ibid. 45).
While subclassifying the Yoruba
verbs, however, Awobuluyi (1978:xiii) does not adhere to his claim of
‘consistent employment of function as the only criterion for establishing the
major parts of speech of the language’. Awobuluyi (1978:53) subclassifies the
Yoruba verbs as follows:
(6) (i) Serial Verbs. They occur in strings or
series of two or more per sentence, e.g. Ó ra
ẹran jẹ ‘He bought meet and ate
it’.
(ii) Splitting Verbs: When used with
an object, each verb in this class is always split into two halves and the object
is inserted between them, e.g. Wọ́n túká
‘They dispersed’, Wọ́n tú wọn ká ‘They were dispersed’.
(iii) Echoing Verbs: Each of these verbs
occurs twice per sentence: The second occurrence could loosely be said to echo
the first, e.g. Rò mí ro ire ‘You should wish me well’
(iv) Complex Verb: In sentences, they behave exactly like
combination of verbs and their objects, e.g. Wọ́n wàhálà rẹ̀ ‘They gave him a hard time’.
(v) Adjectivisable Verbs: These are verb
phrases from which adjectives can be formed, e.g. Aṣọ náà dúdú ‘The cloth is black’.
(vi) Nominal Assimilating Verbs:
The construction in which this class functions always contains adverbial
phrases where the preposition ní is followed
directly by nominalization of the C1í C1-type, e.g. Ó dùn ní jíjẹ ‘It tastes good’.
(vii)
Particle Selecting Verbs: The verbs in this class occur in
a construction which features the particle ní.
The particle has no concrete meaning, e.g. Òjó rán mi ní etí ‘Òjó reminded me’.
(viii) Report Verbs: - These are the verbs
used for reporting or quoting thoughts, e.g. Mo gbọ́ pé o dé lánàá ‘I learnt that you returned yesterday’.
(ix)
Impersonal Verbs: These verbs occur in a type of sentence
whose subject, ó, never refers to
anybody or anything in particular, e.g. Ó yẹ
kí o lọ ‘You ought to go there’.
(x) Causative Verbs: The
verbs in this class have the meaning ‘to cause to do, make to do, bring about’,
e.g. Ó mú mi se bẹ́ẹ̀ ‘He made me do
so’
(xi) Symmetrical Verbs: The
subject and object of each of the verbs in this class are freely
interchangeable, e.g. Inú bí mi/Mo bínú ‘I was angry’
(xii) Interrogative Verbs:-
This is the class of verbs used for
asking questions, e.g. Èyí ń kọ́?
‘What about this one?’
(xiii) Imperative Verbs:
The verbs in this class are used almost exclusively for greetings or requests,
e.g Ẹ pẹ̀lẹ́ sà ‘Hello sir’.
3.
Comments on the Subclassification
In Awobuluyi’s (1978:53),
subclassification in (6) above (6) (i, ii, iv, vii, viii, ix, xi, xii and xiii)
are based on the syntactic behaviour of the verbs and their functions. (16v) is
based on morphology or derivation because the criterion used for its
classification is the possibility of being able to derive adjectives from such
verbs. The subcassification of (16vi) is based on morphology and phonology. If
we take the sentence, Ó mọ ọkọ̀ọ́ wà
‘He knows how to drive’, as an example, we first derive wíwà ‘driving’ from wà ‘to drive’ to give us the sentence Ó mọ ọkọ̀ wíwà used in some dialects
of Yorùbá. From this sentence, the
deletion of the first w takes place
to give us Ó mọ ọkọ̀ í wà.
Assimilation then follows to give us Ó mọ
ọkọ̀ọ́ wa. The verb in Ó mọ ọkọ̀ọ́
wà ‘He knows how to drive’ would be classified as under (16vi). From this
explanation, it is clear that the classification of the nominal assimilating
verbs is not based on function or syntactic behaviour. Also, if their functions
or syntactic behaviour had been used, the echoing verbs should have been in the
same subclass with the serial verbs because they both occur in strings or
series of at least two verbs.
Another problem with Awobuluyi’s
(1978: 53) subclassification of Yoruba verbs is that some verbs occur in more
than one subclass. Examples are gbàgbọ́
‘to believe’ which occurs under the subclasses of splitting verbs and report
verbs; gbàgbé ‘to forget’ which
occurs under the subclasses of complex verbs and report verbs and fẹ́ ‘want’ which occurs under the
subclasses of echoing verbs and nominal assimilating verbs. This is due to the
fact that Awobuluyi (1978:53) uses more than one criterion in his
subclassification of verbs. A look at Awobuluyi (1978:2) will show that none of
the circles he uses as examples for subclassification of items there can occur
in two subclasses because they are subclassified by size only.
4. Conclusion
While discussing the criteria for
subclassifying Yorùbá words, Awobuluyi (1978:5) states that meaning,
derivation, syntactic behaviour and function could be used in their
subclassification He goes further to say
that
Some
grammarians use meaning alone. Others use combination of these, such as meaning
and derivation, or derivation and function. But no existing Yoruba grammar uses
function only….Classification on the basis of meaning or derivation or
syntactic behaviour, or even on the basis of combinations of these, are of
limited value for describing Yoruba grammar….The only proper way to classify
Yoruba words for syntactic purposes is by the functions that they actually
perform in sentences.
(Awobuluyi
1978: 3-4).
As could be seen from our discussion
above, following Oyelaran (1976), the criteria used by Awobuluyi (1978:53) fór
subclassifying Yoruba verbs are meaning,
derivation, syntactic behaviour and function.
Bibliography.
Awobuluyi, Ọládélé (1978), Essentials of Yoruba Grammar. Ibadan :
University Press Limited.
Oyèláran, O. O. (1976), ‘Ìwé Ìléwọ́ lórí Ìsọ̀rí Ọ̀rọ̀
àti Àpólà Ẹ̀yánṣe’ Ìdánilẹ́kọ̀ọ́ fún àwọn, Olùkó Yorùbá fún Túlẹ̀
Oníwèé-méjìlá, University of Lagos, 16-21 August, 1976.
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