Variation in Ẹdó personal pronouns

Abstract

This article re-examines pronouns in Ẹdó, a Niger Congo language indigenous to Nigeria. Previous researches ascribed the large personal pronoun inventory of the language to structural case (Omoregie 1983) and deletion rules (Omoruyi 1986), paying little attention to the internal structure of these words. Thus, this study revisits the issue from the perspective of morphology. Data for the study was obtained from primary and secondary sources. The analysis reveals that the multiplicity of personal pronouns is motivated by different processes. These processes give rise to four sub-types of allomorphy: phonological, suppletive, morpho-syntactically conditioned and lexically conditioned allomorphy.

Keywords

• allomorphy
• Edo language
• personal pronouns
• structural case
• suppletive allomorphs