FOCUS NEGATION IN ÀKÙNGBÁ-ÀKÓKÓ DIALECT OF OǸDÓ STATE, NIGERIA

Scholars had done many works on focus and negation in various Yorùbá dialects. However, none of the existing literary works explores focus negation in Àkùngbá-Àkókó Dialect (AAD). Therefore, the objective of the paper was to examine occurrences of focus negation of constituents in Àkùngbá-Àkókó Dialect (AAD) of Oǹdó State, Nigeria . The constituents that could be focusee and negated in both AAD and Standard Yorùbá (SY) include subject-NP, object-NP, main verb and object of the preposition. Oral interviews were conducted for five native speakers of the dialect whose age ranged between forty and eighty years. The data collected were analysed within the framework of X-bar theory. The findings of the study revealed that there is absence of referent pronoun ‘ó’ in an extraction site when the subject-NP is focused and negated in AAD whereas referent pronoun is pronounced in such sentence in SY. Also, there exists focus marker “kí” in AAD where focus marker “ní” occurs in SY. The study therefore recommended that future researchers should work on the presence of Pro “Í” as a subject-NP in a focused and negated constituent in AAD.