A Linguistic Exposition of NGBÓ̩ in Yoruba

Abstract

Ngbó̩ is an interactive resource for enabling social relations between in a discourse setting. There are various extant studies on syntax of various lexical and syntactic constructions in Yoruba with little attention paid to the syntactic status of ‘ngbó̩’ amongst the structural elements of a clause. ‘Ngbó̩’ is seemingly found around interrogative clause; however, there are divergent opinions on its functional role whether as a question marker, a complementizer, or a sentence modifier. Based on these backdrops, this study investigated the status of ǹgbó̩ in Yoruba language with a view to ascertaining its syntactic and pragmatic functions in the structural formation of Yoruba expressions. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) served as theoretical framework. Through a purposive sampling technique, hypothetical data from day to day conversations among the native speakers of standard Yoruba and extracted samples of ngbó̩- expressions from Yoruba published literary texts formed data for this study. The finding revealed that the focused lexeme is not a question marker rather it is truncated clause used as sentence modifier specifically, as comment adjunct which evidentially expresses source of the clause proposition. Thus, ngbó̩ exposes the speaker’s background knowledge on the clause proposition. In addition to its evidential import on the clause content, it also encodes speaker’s commitment to the truth of the clause proposition. In such a context, it is adjudged as an epistemic modality, which validates the speaker’s personal responsibility for the evaluation of the information whether the information is actually shared or not by the readers.