Published Article

ABSTRACT

This discourse analyses the syntactic and semantic structures of connectives in Ibibio. Connectives are linguistic items that interlink grammatical items in Ibibio. The data for this study were collected from open market square and native speakers of the speech form in focus. The data so gathered were then categorized into syntactic and semantic component structures. The analysis was based on the eclectic-model composed of descriptive analysis and the theory of cohesion propounded by Halliday and Hasan (1976). The syntacmatic component of the analysis reveals that Ibibio connectives are highly productive and systematically structured. However, from the analysis, it is observed that in Ibibio connectives rarely appear at the final position of the sentence. Two different contrasting connectives can appear in one sentence. The analysis equally shows that there is a significant interrelationship between syntax and semantics, thereby justifying the title of this paper. On the whole, Ibibio is a creative and growing language. The analysis also shows that certain connectives in Ibibio are derived through some grammatical processes.

KEYWORDS: Syntacmantic, Structure, Connectives and Ibibio