Morphological processes in MO

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