Phonological Patterning of Words In Akpo And Standard Igbo

Abstract

There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility among the speakers of Akpo variant of Igbo (a satellite dialect of the Aguata main dialect cluster)and the standard igbo. This notwithstanding, a consistent difference in the phonological patterning of some words in the two variants of igbo have been observed . the phonological patterning would often involve the substitution or alternation of the standard Igbo /nw/ or /w/ in the Akpo variant. The paper tries to find out in what words such alternation occurs and what determines it. It discovers, among other things, that the substitution of /nw/ occurs mostly when the verbroot ‘nwe’ is used, though is only some specific contexts. The alternation of /w/ with /m/ occurs mainly, but not exclusively when /w/ appears in the environment of ‘ –we /-wa’ inceptive extensional suffix.