Efik Morphological Processes

Abstract

Morphological processes are operations by the forms of words which are derived from technical concepts used to describe new words. We are therefore inquiring into the operations of human communication trying to reveal the phenomenon of language universality and view the parametric variation found in the language of resource. This work is neither a contrastive nor a comparative one, but Efik copious examples are used as the major resource of the study, then drawing from the examples of English derivational and inflectional morphology. The morphemic analysis is the underpinning behind the semantic and grammatical proportionality which is the reference point that expresses what happens in Efik morphology. This discussion agrees with the various types of morphological processes which are affixation, borrowing, calquing, compounding and reduplication. We are coming up with the justification that there are peculiar morphological processes found in Efik that are not found in English or other languages and also there are those found in the two languages. This reveals the peculiarity of the different languages.

LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research, 8(4), 86-98, 2011