Preposition as a non-lexical class in standard Yorùbá

Preposition as a non-lexical class in standard Yorùbá

Folúkë BõláÂlé Adékëyè

                 University of Ìlörin, Ìlörin, Nigeria

Abstract

Until recently,  the preposition  seems  to have been firmly  established  as one of the lexical  classes  in  Yorùbá   (Crowther1852,   Ògúnbôwálé   1970  Awóbùlúyì   1971,  among others).  This  paper  examines   this  claim  by  employing   the  Minimalist   Programme   as suggested   by  Radford   (1999:38)  that  morpho-syntactic   features   must  be  the  basis  of establishing  a  lexical  class.  This  we  do  by  looking  at  the  morphological   structure  and process   of  the  items  classified   as  preposition   and  their  syntactic   distribution   in  the language.   It  was  found   out  that  preposition   does  not  take  part  in  the  derivational morphology  system in the Yorùbá language neither does it have a position of occurrence as noun and verb do in the language.  The paper therefore concludes that preposition is not a lexical class in the standard Yorùbá but it is part of the functional support for the noun in the language.

Key words: Preposition, Lexical, Class, Standard, Yoruba