THE FEATURES OF IGBO LOCATIVE VERBS

Abstract

This paper sets out to examine the morphological, phonological, morpho-syntactic and semantic characteristics of Igbo locative verbs. The method adopted is purely descriptive. Locative verbs are sub-divided into two types: those that are completely bare, having only a figure and the ground, and those that take posture predicates. The two groups of verbs exhibit different case frames. Morphologically, the bare locative/non-posture locative verbs have the CV structure while the posture locative verbs have the CV + CV structure, which is formed through the combination of two different CV roots involving verbs of TCL I and TCL II. Among the locative verbs d „be‟ is unique in the sense that it is polysemous, with locative and existential meanings. Furthermore, the verb d is exclusively [+ inanimate] while other locative verbs are both [+ animate] and [+ inanimate]. The locative verb n (stay/sit) can take bare or posture reading depending on its contextual semantics. Finally, in relation to the typological classification of languages by Ameka and Levinson (2007), Igbo language seems to belong to their Type II which 
is made up of languages that 3 to 7 locative verbs with some contrastive semantics.