TITLE:
Optional Agreement Patterns in Igbo
AUTHORS:
Ifeoma M. Nweze, Greg O. Obiamalu
KEYWORDS:
Igbo, Optional Agreement, Clitic
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.6 No.2,
April
15,
2016
ABSTRACT: Apart from dominance and precedence relationship, other relations exist in syntactic constructions. One of such relations is the agreement relation. Scholars have discussed the clausal agreement relations of the subject and object. Many of such scholars working on Igbo grammar hold the opinion that Igbo verb forms do not inflect to mark agreement with their arguments. This study, which is purely descriptive without any theoretical colouration, describes and illustrates the optional agreement patterns in Igbo, with the intention to highlight the possibility of number agreement between Igbo verbs and their external and internal arguments. The study shows that clitic elements such as “cha/ga” and “nu” optionally attach to the verb in agreement with the plural subject or object in a sentence. Igbo verbs also take some extensional suffixes to agree with their arguments. We therefore gloss them as AGR morphemes.