The phonetics and phenomic distributions of 'an', 's', 'gw' and gh/in

Abstract

Ifè̩ dialect has some linguistic peculiarities that established it as a dialect of Yorùbá language. However, many of these linguistic distinctiveness have remained elusive to the literary studies in Yoruba linguistics. This paper discussed extensively on the phonetic and phonemic distinctive distributions of /an, s, gw and gh/ in phonotatic constituencies in Ifè̩ dialect. The paper uses the standard Yoruba as a reference language in each phonological description. The data collected in Adékúnlé (1997, 2018) and Adéwo̩lé (2021) were used to testify to many claims in each phonotatic constituence. Data used were descriptively analysis in tandem to generative theory’s principles. Our findings revealed that vowel ‘an’ is more extensively use in Ifè̩ than standard Yoruba where ‘an’ and ‘o̩n’ are basically allophone of the same phonem. ‘ʃ’ as a phonem, stands for ‘s’ and ‘ʃ’, in distributive phonological constituencies as occurring in the standard Yoruba in Ifè̩ dialect. ‘Gh’ and ‘gw’ are allophones of the same phonem in Ifè̩ dialect. The paper testifies that ‘gh’ is the underlying phoneme because it has larger phonotatic distributions than ‘gw’.