EKWE JONAL

This work is aimed at investigating the inflectional morphological features that exist between Ezi?s? and Egbema dialects of the Igbo language. Ezi?s? and Egbema Igbo have not got the attention of researchers in the past and resent times. The objective of the study is focused on discovering the similarities and differences in the dialects under inflectional morphology. The study adopted the framework of concatenative theory. The analysis was carried out using the descriptive approach while focusing on tense, aspect and negation. The findings reveal that the simple past tense is marked in both dialects through the ‘-rv’ suffix. This suffix undergoes verb movement in the environment of a third person plural subject. The future auxiliaries of these dialects are complemented by the participle form of verb which does not take cognizance of vowel harmony. Also, the auxiliaries responsible for past in the future tense are capable of existing independently without attaching themselves to the verb or other elements. More so, the perfective aspect in Ezi?s? and Egbema dialects are marked by a non-harmonizing suffix ‘-na’ and ‘-la’ respectively. The habitual morpheme for Egbema has the grammatical freedom to exist independently in a construction while that of Ezi?s? does not. Negation in both dialects is formed by verbal inflection. In this aspect, the simple declarative and perfective negatives are formed with both prefix and suffix. Also the future negative of Ezi?s? and Egbema is formed by both prefix and suffix. Lastly, this research can be used as a source of information or subsequent studies on various components of linguistic structures. It would also provide a premise for the study and analysis of morphological processes in the various dialects in Igbo language.

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