GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

ABSTRACT

The structuralists’ view of a rigid separation of the various levels of linguistics is actually unrealistic as there is often an aspect of relatedness among them but the morpho-semantic interface has been the least studied in Ikwere. This study concentrated on the morpo-semantic classification of Omuanwa – Ikwere verbs. The study is drawn from a descriptive perspective presenting the collected data in their orthographic forms. The morpho-semantic classification described in this study is based on the analysis of the underived verbs. Data used for the study were elicited from the intuitive knowledge of the researcher alongside the oral interview and participant observation of competent native speakers of the selected dialect of Ikwere. The study has shown that the simple and complex morphologically identified classes of Omuanwa verbs exhibit different forms. The simple verb roots record CV, CV-CV and CV-CV-CV syllabic structures while the complex verb roots are made up of the disyllabic bound roots and the Inherent Complement Verbs (ICVs) which are treated as single underived semantic units. At the semantic level, the Omuanwa verbs are divided into dynamic and stative verbs. The dynamic verbs are further classified as action and event verbs. It is also noted that the inflectional processes are common to both dynamic and stative verbs. Similarly, vowel assimilation and eventual vowel lengthening form the phonological features inherent in the verb classes indicated especially the ICVs.

KEYWORDS: Omuanwa-Ikwere, morpho-semantics, verb morphological structure and semantic relation of verbs