ANALYSIS OF OGBA INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES

Abstract

This study describes and analyses Inflectional affixes in Ọgba, an Igboid languages in Rivers State, Nigeria. It particularly examines the inflectional and derivational operations (role) of affixes in the Language. It shows how certain grammatical ideas or notions like negation, number, imperative, present progressive, affirmative, present progressive negative, future negative forms, present perfective affirmative, the past affirmative, the unfulfilled perfective, infinitive, participle,. Some of the affixes (morphemes) in the language used to arrive at this are as follow: wọ́ and la marking imperative negative; dị́ and ɪ/ị marking present progressive affirmative; dị and wọ marking present progressive negative and future negative; mẹ̀ marking perfective; ṃ̀ẹ and -rị́ are marking past perfective affirmative; -gi̩ rẹ marking unfilled perfective negative; i/ị marking infinitive. Eugene A. Nida's (1949) descriptive analysis of words was used to analyze the research. Furthermore, the Contrastive theory, developed by Fries in the 1940s and popularized by Robert Lado in 1957, was applied in this work. It is a theory that states that positive transfer occurs when two languages are similar, while negative transfer or interference occurs when they are not We believe that this research work would be significant in the development of the Ọgba language, and most pertinently, increase the zeal for the preservation of the language in Rivers State and Nigeria in general.