GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

ABSTRACT

This study examined sluicing construction as an elliptical process in the Ngwa dialect of Igbo. Sluicing is a situation whereby an interrogative clause is reduced to containing only a wh-element. The aim was to provide evidence of the availability and an analysis of the operation of sluiced elliptical constructions in the dialect. The purposive sampling technique was used to obtain the data. The primary data comprised interviews, participant observation, and native-speaker competence, while the library, the internet, and other published materials formed the secondary sources. The Minimalist Program of Chomsky (2000) was adopted in the analysis. Result shows that sluicing relies on wh-question strategy, making use of question words like ngịrị ‘what’, onye ‘who’, ole ‘how many’, nña/ebe ole ‘where’, mgbe ole ‘when’, ke ole ‘which one’, sịta ngịrị ‘because of what’/‘why’, ndịị ‘which’ (where, what, how) to represent an elided structure. Sluicing in Ngwa occurred in direct and indirect interrogatives and involved eliding the entire question phrase leaving behind only the question word, which remains and functions as the complement of the verb of the subordinate clause. However, the elided parts of the question phrase usually share striking resemblance with the matrix clause.

KEYWORDS: Ellipsis, Sluicing, Ngwa-Igbo, Dialect, Minimalism