The Language of Divination Poetry: A Case Study of Dibia Nj?k? Nw?g?

Abstract

Divination is an age long and worldwide activity, it is the spiritual means by which the participants find out from the supreme deity the solutions to the puzzles above the ordinary human mind, through the gods or any other super human being with or without the use of paraphernalia (okodo 1991). Through its language use, art and act, the whole physiological standing of the participants is exposed, from ancient times, igbo people, like other people of the world have not been left out of this practice. The same is applicable to umuaro people, this paper discusses the language of Igbo divination, with particular reference to the divination poems of Dibia Njoku Nwogu from umuaro ihiteoha in Mbutu Nweorie Autonomous community of Abo mbaise L.G.A imo. The following observations have been made about the use of pronouns in the language: (1)in mbaise dialect, the third person singular pronoun ya has different variants: ya/ye,y?/yi according to context and harmony: (2) when this third person singular pronoun follows a word (noun, verb etc) the last vowel in that word changes to ?/i according to harmony, (3) this pronoun seems to function as verb in some contexts, and (4) the plural counterpart ha has different variants eg ha/ he/hi/h?. Moreover, the paper identifies a few figures of speech that the language incorporates as well as archaic usages, modulations and phonoaesthetic features.