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ABSTRACT
This work focuses on the linguistic status of Itsekiri, a languae spoken in Delta State of Nigeria. This study aims at revealing the status of the Itsekiri language which was claimed to be a dialect of Yoruba.
This research therefore is focused on establishing the structural relatedness of Itsekiri to Yoruba language which is the criteria for judging what varieties are dialects of same language and those that are not.
The data collected for this research was collected using the University of Benin two hundred word list. The language samples collected were subjected to an adequate linguistic analysis using the Lexicostatistics framework. The findings of this research reveal that Itsekiri is not a language of its own but a dialect of Yoruba, based on the level of relatedness between the two languages. It was also observed that there is high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two compared varieties with a percentage rate of 58% cognacy level.
The research also reveals that that the structural closeness as well as the high level of mutual intelligibility between Itsekiri and Yoruba cannot be as a result of mere coincidence, language contact, or language borrowing but that Itsekiri is related (structurally) to Yoruba language than it is apart from it.
