Interrogative Expressions in Ọhọrí

Abstract

Interrogative expressions are tools and resources that have been widely discussed in the literature. Though, a lot of scholarly works have been carried out on question expressions in Standard Yorùbá and its dialects, there is dearth of research reports on the truism of interrogative constructions in Ọ̀họ̀rí. Therefore, this study examines the structure of interrogative expressions in Ọ̀họ̀rí. The data used in this study were drawn from 14 adult native speakers of Ọ̀họ̀rí in Kétu, Ègùwá, Asá, Ìpòbẹ́, Òńbẹ́, Ìjòùn, and Ọjà-Ọ̀dàn located in Yewa North Local Government Area of Ogun State, Nigeria via structured interviews using a digital recording device. The study employs Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1995, 1998, and 2002) with an incorporation of Split-CP hypothesis of Rizzi (1997 and 2001) for data analysis. Findings of the study show that Ọ̀họ̀rí has three structural forms of polar questions in their speech form. The paper shows that two phonological processes, deletion and assimilation, obligatorily occur in Ọ̀họ̀rí content questions and that two functional heads - Foc and Inter, contribute to the content question expressions in Ọ̀họ̀rí. The study discusses the projection of interrogative constructions in Ọ̀họ̀rí, showing that while Inter head is overtly present in polar questions, the Inter head is phonetically null in content questions.