Author
Okon, E. A.
Abstract
This work presents a description of the minimalist account of interrogative word movement
in the Ibibio language, a morphologically rich Lower Cross language of the Niger-Congo
phylum spoken in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. The Ibibio language attests specific
interrogative items for questioning human nouns, ànìé 'who', non-human nouns, nsòó/ǹtághà
'what/why', value and quantity, ìfáñ 'how much/many', time nsínì 'what time', places
úké/mmọó 'where' and processes, dìé, 'how'. These question words which are base-generated
within the VP are subsequently moved overtly or covertly to the SPEC-TP domain for case
checking and SPEC- CP for focus. This work adopts Chomsky (1995) Minimalist Program
(MP) framework to account for the movement of these words. As a feature driven model, the
MP regards sentence derivation simply as the pairing of sound and meaning guided by
economy principles of Shortest Move, Greed and procrastinate. Movement is understood to
mean copy and delete. The work establishes that interrogative words move to different
positions in overt syntax. It is observed that interrogative words which are base-generated
within the VP Shell are overtly displaced for case activation for interrogative word subjects
at the SPEC-TP. The study also observes that the movement of the interrogative words within
the VPShell can be covert for interrogative objects. It therefore postulates that the LF raising
of the interrogative word is covert for interrogative word objects. The work also reveals that
object interrogative words can be moved to the left periphery of the sentence identified as
I
SPEC-C – a FOCUS Phrase. Once they are moved, they are obligatorily followed by the
focus marker ké in the language and such leftward unbounded movement is for some
prominence on the focused item.
Keywords
case, feature, interrogative, movement, left periphery
Introduction
Language is a complex and structured arbitrary vocal system in which words are merged for
communication. It is the output of the cognitive process in which the stock of lexical items
are minimally ordered for communication. Communication also includes question
formation or posing a question for an answer. With the human mind as a language processor,
it is assumed that lexical/phrasal elements/interrogative words are re-arranged to produce
different questions or sentences. Interrogative words are words used in asking questions.
Content
Unlike the English language, interrogative words in Ibibio do not have the 'whs' beginning
their questioning words at any instance, but they occupy the SPEC-TP in Ibibio and SPECCP for non-in-situ derivations in both languages. Under the minimalist view, movement of
interrogative words can take place before and after the Spell-out. Movement operations
which take place before and after the Spell-out are called overt and covert movements
respectively. Olaogun (2016) observes that overt movement is feature movement in addition
to pied-piping of the element that bears the features, while covert movement is limited to
feature movement without pied-piping. Movement of interrogative phrases in the Ibibio
language is both overt and covert .
The Ibibio language makes a distinction between two kinds of questions. One is a
question which requires a Yes-No answer, while the other does not require a Yes-No answer.
According to Essien (1990), the latter kind of question is referred to as wh-questions in the
sense that the equivalent question words in English contain 'wh' except how. In the Ibibio
language, question words do not contain 'wh'. Though this work identifies interrogative
words, but it uses the term wh-movement to characterise the process of movement.
Therefore, wh-movement is an attested phenomenon in the language. Ibibio displays two
patterns with respect to the position of wh-words in overt syntax. The two patterns include
wh-in-situ for the subject and the object positions (in which the interrogative word is basegenerated) and non-in-situ (in which the interrogative word is optionally moved). However,
the syntactic behaviour of interrogative words in this language displays three possibilities
and each of them is both grammatical and acceptable in the language
Conclusion
This study is based on the tenets of Chomsky's (1995) grammatical model, the Minimalist
Program. The predicate Internal Subject Hypothesis (PISH), one of the tenets of MPassumes
that the subject of a clause originates from the VPShell. In relation to this study, it is observed
that the interrogative word subject is base-generated within the VPand is subsequently raised
to the SPEC-TP where its nominative case feature can be checked. The checking operation
that is licensed by movement is the elimination of the [-interpretable] formal features. The
study equally observed that within VP Shell, the movement of the interrogative word object
is covert where the accusative case feature is checked within the merge condition. On the
other hand, an interrogative word can be displaced from a motivated case object position to a
position of focus. This position is not within the minimal clause. This type of interrogative
word movement is described as a leftward unbounded movement. From the above, it is
observed that the Ibibio interrogative words can be found at the subject and object positions
of the sentence as well as at the inter-clausal domain where is preposed to the left periphery.
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