Progressive inflectional patterns in Tiv

Abstract

The study entitled ‘Progressive inflectional patterns in Tiv’ is relevant because it complements the body of literature on Tiv inflection. Previously published papers on Tiv inflection at the disposal of the researchers do not treat progressive inflectional patterns in the language, let alone anchoring the study of progressive inflection in the Tiv language on Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM). Hence, the present study is designed to examine the progressive inflectional patterns in the Tiv language using the theoretical framework of Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM). The objectives of the study are to examine the progressive inflectional patterns featuring suffixation in the Tiv language and progressive inflectional patterns in the language featuring zero affixation. Since the study is designed to examine the progressive inflection in the Tiv language, the survey design was adopted. Data for the study were collected using semi-structured interviews and the researchers’ introspection. The study discovered that progressive inflectional patterns in the Tiv language are marked using suffixation and zero affixation respectively. The findings also show that progressive inflections are marked in the verbal roots so that such verbs can fit in with the syntactic structures in order to express ongoing activities or actions in the Tiv language.