ASPECTS OF PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY OF OYÍN ÀKÓKÓ

ABSTRACT This project examines the Aspects of phonetics and phonology of Oyín Àkókó. It concentrates on the phonetics and the phonological processes found in the language. The phonetics aspect deals with the sound inventories and the syllable structure of Oyín. The consonant inventory of Oyín, their distribution and their occurrence was explained. Also, the vowel inventory of Oyín and the suprasegmental sounds were also explained in a descriptive manner. The acoustic properties of the consonants, vowels and tones in Oyín were analyzed by using praat software. Among this phonological processes are: deletion, coalescence and assimilation. The motivation of this study is to know the status of Oyín speech form either it is Yoruboid as most scholars classified it or it is an independent language entirely. The ten speech forms spoken in Àkókó North-west local government area including Oyín have been a subject of debate.The Àkókó North-west speech forms have attracted names from scholars since the 1960s and Oyín has been classified under the Yoruboid group of defoid branch of the Benue-Congo sub family in the proposed sub-classification of Benue-Congo languages. For example, Greenberg (1963) classified the Àkókò North-West under “Yoruboid”, Hoffman (1974) called them “Northern Àkókò Cluster”. Bennet and Sterk (1977) noted in John Bendor Samuel (1989) also referred to them as “Yoruboid”, Capo (1989) suggested “Amgbẹ” for the Group, Akínkùgbé (1978) refers to them as “Akokoid”, Akínyẹmí (2002) gives them the title “Arigidi-Amgbe”,Ohiri-Anichie (2006) also refers to them as “Akokoid”, Lonera (Ethnologue 2009) proposed the Name “Arigidi Cluster” for the group, Fadọrọ (2010) retains the name “Akokoid”, Oshodi (2011b) classified them as “North-Central Yorùbá” (NCY) dialects, Olúwádọrọ (2014) Tagged them “North-West Akokoid” While ọláògún (2016) referred to them as Ǹjọ-Kóo. Now, this work argues that Oyín is far away from being classified as Yoruboid rather it is a separate language on its own. I did not dispute the fact that the native speakers of this language are competent in their language as well as language; the truth is that some of the lexical items found in Oyín are from Yorùbá, some of it shares features from Edoid while some of it have no source to trace it to. The historical fact about the migration patterns of the progenitors of Oyín is what makes the language to share features from two different languages which is Yorùbá and Edo.