NOMINALISATION IN USEN

                                                    ABSTRACT

The nominalisation process plays a pivotal role in the derivation and creation of new words in all languages, the Usen dialect inclusive. Usen is located in the North West of Benin City, irrespective of geographical location the dialect is mutually intelligible with the Yoruba language.  This study aims to examine some of the processes involved in nominalising words in the Usen language.  This study is consequently prepared to probe into how nouns are formed through other word classes and which of these word classes can be used in noun derivation.   R.M.W Dixon’s Basic linguistics theory also known as descriptive theory was adopted as the theoretical framework.   The instrument used for data collection is the Ibadan 400 level syntactic paradigms. Data was collected from Four indigenous speakers of Usen who have spent half of their lives in the Usen community.

The findings in this study shows that nomimalisation in the language occurs through  gerundization, desententialization, Agentives and compounding and that words like “kọrin” which means to sing in Usen is  gotten from the noun “Kọ”  which means to “sing” and the Noun “ Orin” which means “ Song”, put together its sing song = kọrin.