SOURCE:

Faculty: Arts
Department: Igbo, African & Chinese Studies

CONTRIBUTORS:

Onwudiwe, G. E;
Mbah, B.M;

ABSTRACT:

English, an Indo-European language, is an intonation language. On the other hand, Igbo, one of Nigeria’s major languages of Niger-Congo family and Benue-Congo phylum, is classified as a tone language. As different types of languages, it is expected that they should contain different phonetic features such as different pitch patterns. But a popular claim is that virtually all languages of the world display intonation features. To authenticate the presence of intonation in tone languages or tone in intonation languages and their point of relatedness, therefore, becomes a necessary study. To study the nature of speech sounds based on ear perception alone may no longer produce a very accurate result. An acoustic study is wont to present a more reliable result, hence, the present experimental study to determine the authenticity of the behaviour of speech sounds, especially the suprasegments. This research is an acoustic study of the interface of tone and intonation. In the study, the speech of some Igbo language speakers of English are investigated with the aim of determining whether the Igbo and English languages share the features of tone and intonation. The study identifies the nature and points of relatedness, and whether Igbo (tone language) speakers of English (intonation language) encounter problems and the nature of such problems in terms of prosodic features. To collect the required data for the study, prospective sampling was made – two males and two females - were used. These consultants are Igbo native speakers who also command high competence in the English language. Tokens of words and sentences