THE PHONETICS OF ẸTUNỌ

ABSTRACT

This work is a study on the phonetics of Etuno, a dialect of Ebira language which is a member of the Nupoid language family. The aim of the study is to examine the phonetics of Etuno which include the consonants, vowels, tones, syllable, syllable structure and syllable structure processes. The study relies heavily on oral data and   verified from some written sources. The data were sourced from native speakers of Ẹtunọ using the Ibadan 400 wordlist and 50 phrases with some grammatical constructions. The study uses the articulatory phonetics approach which focuses on the physical aspects of speech production, including the movements and positions of the speech organs. It also uses the CV phonological framework to determine the syllable structure. The findings of this study include the fact that the Etuno dialect has a total of 28 sound segments; twenty one (21) consonants and seven oral vowels. The study also finds that the syllable structures are V, CV, CCV and VC(which is very limited). The syllable structure processes discovered in the dialect are vowel elision, glide formation and CV deletion leading to syllable reduction.