TOWARD THE USE OF NUMERAL QUALIFIERS IN YORUBA: DISCOURSE IN IFÁ CORPORA, ÌBEJÌ, PROVERBS, INCANTATIONS AND COUNTING SYSTEMS
Author(s)
Oluwọle Tẹwọgboye Okewande
.
Abstract
It is an established rule in literature that, qualifiers qualify nouns and always come after the
nouns in the grammar of Yorùbá language. This is however contrary to numeral interactions
with qualifiers around contexts of Ifá corpora, Ìbejì- twins compound names, proverbs, ọfọ̀-
incantation and Yoruba counting systems. This study seeks to fill this gap. Relevant data
relating to nominal quantifiers are carefully selected across various contexts, discourse and
texts analyzed with empirical approach- a method that investigates a problem within its real
life context through existing cases. It is stated that, like VO and OV languages, Yoruba nominal
qualifiers operate NumN and NNum. The study concludes that, rules governing numeral
qualifiers in Yoruba are unstable just as the language of Ifá is not static.
Keywords: Ìbejì, Ifá, noun qualifier, numerals, proverbs
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Domaines
ISSN : 2959-9407 Editeur : UFR Lettres et Arts Université : UPGC Périodicité : Semestriel Domaines : Lettres, Langues, Littératures, Communication et Sciences de l’Education