Yoruba Language and Literature: Grammar

This study centres on reflecting the pronunciation of lemmas in a proposed multilingual dictionary of Lukumi, Olukumi and Yoruba. It shows how the differences and similarities in their pronunciation can be displayed in the proposed dictionary. Lukumi is spoken in Cuba while Olukumi and Yoruba are spoken in Nigeria. The parent language, Yoruba, was used as a reference point to highlight the etymology of Lukumi and Olukumi as well as to buttress their similarities. Two downloaded Lukumi wordlists making up 134 words were used to elicit information on Olukumi equivalents through oral interview Olukumi and Lukumi are spoken by Yoruba descendants in Delta state of Nigeria and in Cuba respectively. While Olukumi speakers are Yoruba descendants who migrated to the present day Delta state (Oshimili Local GovernmentArea) of Nigeria, Lukumi speakers are descendants of Yoruba slaves taken to Cuba and Brazil.

Even though diachronic change is inevitable for any living language, relatively little attention has been paid to diachronic changes in Yoruba. It remains to be seen how the earliest written documents in the language can be a source of information for how the language has evolved over a period of 200 years

The material would enable us to connect the Yoruba with its kindred dialect s, and so , by direct inference , to lay down its position amongst the language s of Africa, we may still , from the very want of those analogies, come at a negative conclusion, and exclude it from one and another of those ethnological families whose characteristic features are prominent and defined , and so perhaps eventually , after a series of ex elusion s, arrive at a satisfactory result, from which there will be no escaping

A critical review of seven earlier Yoruba grammars (Chapter 1)
leads to the conclusion that, in many ways pointed out, these
grammars failed to provide an adequate grammar of the Yoruba Verb.
This failure calls for a deeper and more meaningful analysis of
the Yoruba Verb System which the analysis presented in Chapters 3 - 10
attempts to provide.

This study, therefore, describes and investigates the body-part terminology of Yoruba, a major language of Nigeria. Over the last 150 years, Yoruba has benefited from a lot of linguistic attention, mainly in the area of phonetics, (morpho-)phonology, morphology, and syntax. As with many African languages however, investigation of semantic issues has remained behind. The present study focuses on the body and its parts as a semantic domain, providing first of all a detailed and illustrated overview of Yoruba body-part terms (§2.1), and furthermore covering such areas as grammatical constructions for bodily actions and events, organizing principles of the domain, semantic extensions of body-part terms, some of the roles ascribed to internal body-parts, and the body in the context of the Yoruba conception of a person (the rest of chapter 2). An overview of previous research into body-part terminology (§1.2) provides the necessary background to the more descriptive part, as well as to the discussion of some broader theoretical implications of the Yoruba data in the third chapter.

The Yoruba grammar sketch deals with the bilabial, labiodental, alveolar, palatal, velar, labiovelar, and glottal. , Yoruba has three level tones: high, mid and low represented with [ ʹ ], [ ˉ ] and [ ̀ ] respectively.3 Tones usually occur on vowels.4 The three level tones determine the meanings that each word has in Yoruba. For example, a form that has the same form (i.e. vowels and consonants) can have different meanings depending on the tones that it has.

Yorùbá Yémi is a new multi-media program designed to enliven classroom
activities. It promotes and enhances the learning of Yorùbá by incorporating the
four language learning skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It is the first
part of a two-part series, and the first edition.

This paper examines two grammatical elements ní and sí which have been considered as prepositions in the grammar of Yoruba (Benue-Congo). We argue that these two elements belong to different word classes; ní is a preposition, while sí is a verb. We present novel data that show syntactic asymmetries that exist between the two elements: behavior under extraction, the possibility of pseudocleft formation, the order of the phrases in a clause, iteration, formation of complex prepositions, and subcategorization.

This paper investigates this group of verbs in Yoruba looking especially at their syntactic frame and features in both causative and inchoative constructions. Employing theoretical insights from minimalist grammar with data evidence from Standard and Central Yoruba dialects, it argues that such verbs are base generated in the core VP before their first halves are raised to lexicalize the functional light v within the outer VP shell.