THE SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES IN EDO LANGUAGE

ABSTRACT

          The aim of this study is to determine how Grammar is configured in Edo Language by identifying those elements that are without substantive form (Chomsky, 1995) or those elements that are called closed classed categories (Huddleston. 1988) or functional expression cann (1996) and how these elements are distributed in Edo clauses. These elements: Determinative, Conjunctions,

Adverbs and Prepositions. are employed essentially to make sentences grammatical i.e to relate the forms (Contentive expression. Cann 1996) together, .hence they can be considered as the glue that hold sentences together and makes them grammatical. They are:

(1)    Words that are closed (having fixed set of elements that cannot be expanded though. This is not universal.

(2)    Words that serve as the means of explaining or specifying other words in a sentence.