GERUNDIZATION PROCESS IN EDO LANGUAGE

ABSTRACT
Gerundization is a process of deriving nouns or adjectives from verbs. This work explicitly shows how The Edo language derives
gerunds by the addition of the well-known discontinuous morpheme U…..mwẹ and also proposes the use of another discontinous  morpheme Ọ…..ọmwa. The researcher decides to embark on this exercise in other to throw more light on how some nouns and adjectives originate from verbs through gerundization as a derivational process.
The data for this research work relies mainly on information got ten from published and unpublished works, and face to face interaction with competent speakers of the language. The analysis of the data was through morphological processes.
Some of the findings among other things reveal that gerunds are
derived from a monosyllabic verb that bears a high or a rising tonal pattern and a disyllabic verb that bears a low-high tonal pattern.
This work is significant because it exposes us to the morphological process of deriving gerunds in Edo language.