Abstract:
The study investigates morphophonological processes in Mo under the framework of
Item and Arrangement (Hockett, 1954). Interviews and documents were the instruments
used to arrive at the data. Four morphological processes were identified, namely;
compounding, affixation, reduplication and multiple formations. The study established
that N+N, N+A and N+V are the various patterns of compounds found in Mo and with
their accompanying prominent phonological processes such as vowel, lateral and syllable
deletion, vowel shortening, vowel lengthening and homorganic nasal assimilation. The
study also revealed that two semantic types of compound words exist in Mo: endocentric
and exocentric compounds. The study equally identified the suffixes –ι, -a, -i, -nῖ, -nã, -
la, -ra, -nar, -e and -rι as inflectional suffixes for plural marking on nouns in Mo
whereas the suffixes –yie, -wie, -tι/-tιna, -i, -a, -ga, -ͻ, -u, -υ, -lι, -rι and -ι were
identified as derivational suffixes in the language. The study revealed that verbs with
different syllable structures undergo both full and partial reduplication with some
phonological instances of vowel shortening and consonant elision. Additionally, the study
discovered that the formation of agentive nouns in Mo involves the amalgamation of two
morphological processes, reduplication and suffixation, and with vowel harmony as the
phonological process that characterises their formation. The study established some
unique functions of the morphological processes in Mo. Compounding was identified as a
derivative mechanism, affixation as pluralisation (inflectional) and nominalisation
(derivational) mechanisms, and reduplication as an adverbialisation (derivational)
mechanism
Description:
A thesis in the Departent of Applied Linguistics,
Faculty of Foreign Languages Education and Communication,
submited to the School of Graduate Studies, in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for award of the degree of
Master of Philosophy
(Applied Linguistics)
in the University of Education, Winneba
OCTOBER, 2020