PLURAL DEVICES IN ẸDO LANGUAGE

ABSTRACT
This study examines the strategies employed by the Ẹdo language to signal plurality on lexical items at word level. Ẹdo language is spoken in seven (07) out of the eighteen (18) Local Government Areas in Ẹdo State namely; Orhiomwọn, Orẹdo, Ikpoba-Ọkha, Egor, Uhunmwodẹ, Ọvia South West and Ọvia North East. This work aims at describing and accounting for the various strategies employed in marking plurality in Ẹdo and to highlight some of the peculiarities and distinctions which characterize the Ẹdo plural system. The primary data collected for this work was from seven (five females and two males) competent native speakers with the aid of a sound recorder. The theoretical framework chosen for this work is the Basic Linguistic Theory. The focus of the present study is to provide accurate descriptions of the Ẹdo plural devices, thus, the study adopted the framework because it is a tool we need in order to accomplish the objectives of this research. Since our task in this study is to describe plural devices in Ẹdo, we consider the framework to be well-suited to our purpose. The findings in this study reveals that Ẹdo uses numbers, prefixes e.g ‘avbe-’, ‘-eva’ etc, quantifiers e.g hia ‘all’ and nibun ‘many’ and initial vowel mutation in the case of okpia ‘man’  ikpia ‘men’ to form the plurals of nouns. The plurals of personal pronouns (1st, 2nd, 3rd person subject and object case) are formed through prefixation and suppletion. We also observed the presence of reduplication, zero plural and suppletion as rare plural devices in the language.