The Etymo-Morphological Analysis of Some Mis-Pronounced Selected Yoruba Place Names in Modern Cities; Constituent Interrogatives in Yoruba: A Minimalist Description [In English]

Abstract

Constituent interrogatives are employed to request for more than yes/no answers from interlocutors. Extant works on constituent interrogatives in Yorùbá are yet to pay adequate attention to the syntactic behaviour of question nouns (QNs), question verbs (QVs) and interrogative qualifiers in the language. Therefore, this paper investigated the syntax of constituent interrogatives in Yorùbá with a view to providing plausible evidence showing QNs, QVs and interrogative qualifiers as constituent interrogative markers in the language. Primary and secondary data were collected and subjected to syntactic analysis within the confines of Minimalist Program (MP). Yorùbá uses the following to form its constituent interrogatives: QVs (dà, ńkọ́), QNs (ta, kí, èwo, mélòó, èló, ìkelòó) and interrogative qualifiers (wo, kelòó). A QN is copied to the clause left peripheral position in a content-word question unlike an echoed question. Wo as the interrogative qualifier, that is the question marker (QM) in ìgbà wo ‘when’ ibo (ibi è(wo) ‘where’, báwo (bá wo) ‘how’ has its [+Q], the question feature percolated through the entire DPs, that is the question phrases (QPs). A QN does more than satisfying focus requirement in the language while the QVs (dà and ńkọ́) perform predicate function. A QN qualifies a preceding noun just like a nominal qualifier does in an affirmative sentence in the language.

Keywords

• constituent interrogatives
• minimalist program
• question markers
• question feature
• yorùbá