Greg Orji Obiamalu

Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka | Unizik · Department of Linguistics

Being a multilingual and multicultural nation, Nigeria is blessed with over 525 languages (Blench, 2014) from four different language families. The sheer number of indigenous languages makes an interesting tapestry! Unfortunately, not much attention has been paid to the study of our indigenous languages, with all the abundant prospects. This paper...

Westernization and Christianity, no doubt, have been major contributory factors responsible for much inflicted change on the Igbo cultural heritage. The negative impact of this change is becoming worrisome as it has seriously done much havoc not only to the Igbo culture but on the language as well. The fear is that if nothing is done, and urgently...

This paper presents a descriptive account of some grammatical categories in gbahù dialect of the Ìgbò language, one of the three major languages of Nigeria, West Africa. The purpose of this study is to show how these grammatical categories operate in gbahù dialect. These grammatical categories (functors) are Tense, Aspect, Negation and Agreement. T...

The notion of „case‟ has been a controversial one, yet the grammatical terminology has survived right from traditional Grammar to the current grammatical theories. This paper critically examines the notion of case within different grammatical frameworks. Our interest is mainly on the role of syntax and semantics in case determination and the level...

The educational collaboration between China and Nigeria is one of the most important issues facing China and Nigeria whereby Nigeria receives a great support from the Chinese government to enhance Chinese teaching and learning. Apart from the Chinese Primary and Secondary school located in Abuja, Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka is the first...

Litotes is understatement while hyperbole is overstatement. Litotes is linguistically characterized by a negative. However, by context of use it contributes to a positive output. Hyperbole is not characterized by any specific linguistic elements; words are used to express situations beyond reality. The litotic and hyperbolic phenomena receive more...

Compounds are generally words with two or more of other words as their constituents. T he category of the output of compounding may be identical with the category of each of the constituents or one of them or a different category altogether. In this work, we have identified and analyzed a verb form in Igbo structurally described as V+nye , where V...

Code-switching (CS) has been defined as ‘the act of alternation of two languages within a single discourse, sentence or constituent’ Poplack (1980:583). Technically, code-switching refers to alternation between sentences while intra-sentential alternation is referred to as code-mixing. Following Poplack (1980), we use the term code-switching to ref...

Code-switching and code-mixing are known to be universal phenomena among bilinguals. Not until recently, codeswitch ng/ mixing was seen as evidence of “internal mental confusion, the inability to separate two languages sufficiently to warrant the description of true bilingualism” (Lipski 1982:191). Studies have shown that code-switching is not a ma...

Globalization is the ability of many people, ideas and technology to move from one country to another (cf. Emenanjo, 2005). This implicates globalization as oriented to achieving universalization, homogenization, integration and centralization: factors which portend danger to the cultural and linguistic identity of most of the peoples of the world,...