An Overview of Etulo: An Idomoid Language

Etulo is an Idomoid language spoken in two Nigerian states: Taraba and Benue. This work gives an overview of the core linguistic features of Etulo as spoken in Benue state. At the phonological level, we highlight the Etulo sound system, its tonal features, syllable structure and the most common phonological processes attested. At the morphological level, we focus on its derivational morphology which involves morphological processes such as affixation, reduplication and compounding. We give a list of the identified word classes with emphasis on the noun and verbal system. Also discussed, are grammatical features which are considered areal such as its rich class of ideophones and verb serialization. Our findings show that Etulo shares some core structural features with other Idomoid languages such as Idoma. The data used for this study are obtained from Etulo language consultants who are native speakers. We adopt a descriptive approach in the analysis of the Etulo language data.


Introduction
Nigeria is a multi-lingual community made up of over 350 languages. Some of these languages have been researched on while others have remained relatively underdeveloped. Bleambo [1] calls these languages endangered languages as majority of them do not have standardized orthographies, standard varieties, written literatures and Meta languages. Etulo belongs to the group of endangered languages considering that it has yet no standardized orthography, no standardized written literature, it is not taught in schools, and it has no meta language.
In the Benue state, Etulo exists alongside some other indigenous languages like Tiv, Hausa, Idoma, and Igede. Of all these languages, Tiv is the dominant one. Thus, in addition to their native language, most Etulo people also speak Tiv, which is taught in schools to all students and equally serves as the main language of commerce. The use of Etulo is therefore largely restricted to the home domain and markets or church in the Etulo land. This has caused an influx of Tiv words into the Etulo lexicon. Besides the Tiv language, Etulo also borrows words from English, and Hausa, as well as other languages that it is in contact with.
The rest of this work is structured as follows: §1 provides more ethnolinguistic information on Etulo, gives a linguistic classification of Etulo as well as the origin/history of the Etulo people. In §2, we discuss some phonological features of Etulo. §3 explores the morphological processes and §4 the attested lexical categories with emphasis on the noun and verbal system. In §5, we highlight some areal grammatical features and in §6 we make a little note on the Etulo orthography. This is followed by the conclusion in §7.

Ethnolinguistic Information on Etulo
The name Etulo refers to the language, the land and the people. According to history, the Etulo were once wrongly called Turu and Utur respectively by the Tiv and Hausa neighbours. Etulo is spoken in two local government areas in Benue state namely: Katsina ala and Buruku LGAs. It is spoken in Benue alongside other languages like Tiv, Hausa, Idoma, Igede and English. The work is based on the Etulo variant spoken in Benue state. The Etulo land (Ikpese Etulo) in Benue stretches from 7°N to 9°N latitudes and 11°E to 13°E longitude Tabe [2]. The estimated number of Etulo speakers varies from one source to another. According to the 1988 census as recorded in Shain [3], Etulo has about ten thousand speakers. The Joshua project, a ministry of the US centre for world missions [4], records about twenty thousand Etulo language speakers. Etulo is made up of about 14 clans. Nine of these (Agbatala, Oglazi, Agbɔ, Ugiε, Agia, Ogbulube, O∫afu, Okpa∫ila and Ingwaʤε) fall into the Buruku Local Government Area, while the remaining five clans (Otsazi, Otanga, Okadiɲa, ∫εwε and a∫itanakwu) belong to Katsina Ala Local Government Area of the Benue state.

The Genetic Classification of Etulo
Etulo is classified as an Idomoid language of the Benue Congo subgroup of the Niger Congo language family Armstrong [5]. This classification is maintained in Williamson and Blench [9] and Gordon [10]. Tabe [11] considers Etulo to be closely related to some Jukunoid languages of the Platoid sub group of the Niger Congo language. Some of these languages include Idoma, Jukun, Afo, Goemai, Igbirra, Iyala, Nupe etc. This could be traced to the fact that the Etulos have strong historical and cultural ties with these groups of people who formed the old Kwararafa kingdom. Figure 1 shows the language family tree of Etulo as adapted from Williamson [12] and Williamson and Blench [13] with slight modifications.

The Historical Origin of the Etulo People
Tabe [6] traces the history of the Etulo to one of the Jukunoid groups of people that formed the erstwhile Kwararafa kingdom in the distant past. As a result of some socio-political factors, these groups separated and migrated to different areas for settlement. The groups include Etulo, Idoma, Igbirra, Ogoja, Afo, Nupe, Jukun etc. The Etulos occupied the land long before the migration of Tivs to Benue. Gbor [7] recounts that the Etulos had settled on the coast of the Benue River long before the Tiv, who migrated from Swem around the Cameroun hills to meet them there. Gbor claims that it was through conquest that the Tiv people pushed the other segments of the Kwararafa Kingdom, (such as the Jukuns the Idomas and the rest) out of the Benue valley and settled where they are today. Hanior (8) explains that the Etulo people decided to remain on the coast of the Benue River to maintain their occupation.
The Etulos believe to have a progenitor, Ibagye, to whom they can trace back their descent. Ibagye is believed to have had children including Itsikpe who was known as the leader of his people. Itsikpe had three sons namely: Okakwu the eldest, Ozi and Okwe. History has it that these three sons later became the leaders of their people and consequently established a royal family to rule the Etulos Tabe [15].

The Phoneme Inventory of Etulo
Etulo has twenty nine distinctive consonant phonemes as In previous analysis of Etulo phonology (cf: Armstrong [16], Adams Inyani [17], NBTT [18], the phoneme inventory includes the following phonemes: /ky fy gy bw/. The above phonemes could alternatively be accounted for by the phonological processes of glide formation and labialiazation. Using our phoneme inventory, words which at the phonological level are realized by previous analysis as /kyε/ 'be old', /ongya/ 'woman' and /fue/ 'sprinkle' are rather represented as /kɪɛ/, /óngìâ/, and /fúé/.
Etulo has eight oral vowels as shown in the vowel chart below. These oral vowels have their lengthened and nasalized variants which are non-contrastive. Etulo presents a partial vowel harmony system based on ATR values. The eight vowels of Etulo fall into two groups: The scope of vowel harmony is restricted to a prosodic word. In other words, this feature does not spread leftward to a prefix, pronouns or rightward to a suffix.

The Tone System
Etulo is a register tone language with three contrastive level tones (high, mid and low) and two gliding tones (rising and falling tones). The rising tone occurs rarely and is non-contrastive. In Etulo, tone performs both lexical and grammatical functions. At the lexical level, it distinguishes between two or more otherwise identical words (1)(2)(3). At the grammatical level, the low tone is relevant in the derivation of interrogative constructions (polar questions) as illustrated in (4a-4b). 1 'Did Adi eat meat?'

The Syllable Structure
Etulo mainly presents open syllables except for a few words that end with the alveolar nasal /n/. A sketch of the syllable structure is given below: Five syllable types are attested: The CVN and CCV structure are relatively rare. The CCV is particularly common with ideophonic words. The only type of consonant cluster attested is that of a stop and liquid/trill (/pl/, /tr/, /gl/ /fl/). NC sequences such as /mgb ms mts nd ndz/ are analysed as heterosyllabic consonant clusters rather than prenasalized consonants. In (5a), the N /m/ belongs to the first syllable and is realized as a coda while the C /gb/ belongs to the second syllable. In (5b) the m belongs to the first syllable and is realized as a nucleus while the C /ts/ belongs to another syllable. Such NC clusters are therefore not prenasalized consonants. 5a) [ám.gbéká] 'some' 5b) [mX .tsà] 'mango

Phonological Processes
Some of the phonological processes attested in Etulo are elision, assimilation (vowel and consonant assimilation where the latter is associated with homorganic nasals), vowel coalescence, glide formation and vowel insertion. We briefly discuss two of these processes in this section.

Vowel Insertion
Vowel insertion involves altering the phonological pattern of foreign/borrowed words (nouns) by the insertion of a low tone vowel. The process of vowel insertion may be prothetic or epenthetic. It is prothetic when the insertion occurs at the word initial position and epenthetic when it occurs in the word final position. Nouns in Etulo mostly begin with a vowel or syllabic nasal but hardly with a consonant. Words (especially nouns) borrowed from other languages like English and Hausa are modified to adapt to the phonological pattern of indigenous Etulo nouns by the insertion of a low tone vowel at the beginning or end of a word. In some cases however, the modification of these borrowed words is not restricted to the process of vowel insertion. This is illustrated with the following examples:

Vowel Elision
Vowel elision in Etulo involves the deletion of the first or second of two adjacent vowels at word boundary. This process is applicable to V+N (6) and N+N (7)(8)

Morphological Features
Etulo is predominantly an isolating language with little agglutinative features. Grammatical categories such as tense, aspect and number are mostly marked by isolated morphemes rather than by affixes. In a derivational function, the only categories known to take an affix are the verb and ideophone. The three word formation processes identified are: affixation, reduplication and compounding.

Affixation
Etulo has a nominalizing low tone vowel prefix o-which attaches to verbs in the formation of derived nominals and to ideophones in modifying function. In addition to prefixation, the derivation of gerundive nominals involves the process of reduplication and tonal modification.

Reduplication
Reduplication is relevant in the formation of derived gerundive nominals, ideophones (see table 4) and the derivation of a small set of adjectives from nouns. For the derivation of adjectives from nouns, the word initial vowel of the nouns /u/ is substituted by the high tone vowel /o/. From a diachronic viewpoint the high tone vowel may have been a derivational prefix but is now unproductive. Examples: Base (noun) Reduplicated form (adjective) 9a) úmbí 'dirt' → ómbímbí 'black/dark' b) úndzɛ^ 'whiteness' → óndzúndzɛ́ 'white' c) úmá 'fairness' → ómúmá 'red'

Compounding
Two types of compounds are identified: nominal and verbal. Both compound types are characterized by phonological features such as vowel assimilation, elision and tonal change.

Verb Compound
Three groups of verb compounds are identified. The first group comprises at least two verbs which can occur independently. Some of the verb compounds in this group are lexicalised serial verbs (11a-b). The second group comprises the verb and a particle or two verbs. They are usually endocentric compounds with a compositional meaning (12ab). The third group comprises inseparable forms which are

The Word Classes
The word classes identified in Etulo include the noun, verb, adjective (a small class), adverb, pronoun and preposition In this section, we briefly highlight some features of two lexical categories: the noun and verb.

The Verb
Many Idomoid languages have the common Eastern Kwa trait that allows verbs to begin with a consonant and nouns to begin with a vowel Armstrong [18]. This observation holds in Etulo. The verb root typically begins with a consonant or syllabic nasal and is open ended. Verb roots in Etulo consist of not more than three syllables. The monosyllabic verb root seems more common than the disyllabic and trisyllabic verb roots.
Etulo verbs may be classified on the basis of their transitivity value, semantics, tone, and their ability to take meaning specifiers. In this section, we focus on the classification made on the basis of the last criterion (ability to take meaning specifiers/complements). This is however, not a peculiar feature of Etulo. Some other West African languages such as Igbo, Ewe, Akan, Idoma and Ga also classify verbs into groups based on their capacity to take complements. Etulo makes a broad distinction between two classes of verbs: complement and noncomplement verbs.

Complement Verbs
A complement verb co-exists at the underlying structure with a nominal for the full specification of its meaning. Such verbs are either ambiguous or subject to different semantic interpretations without their complement which is usually a noun. The verb root and nominal complement are so bound together in meaning that native speakers intuitively think of some of them (verb + complement) as one word. Another motivation for such analysis by native speaker is traced to the phonological process of vowel elision and contraction which is quite common with some complement verbs in spoken speech (17a-b).

Non Complement Verbs
Non-complement verbs do not require an obligatory noun as complement for the full realisation of meaning. Many disyllabic verbs fall within this group. Examples:

Areal Features
We this section, we highlight two areal features in Etulo namely; verb serialization and the existence of a rich class of ideophones.

Verb Serialization
Verb serialization is considered an areal feature of many West African languages, especially of Kwa, Benue Congo and Gur subgroups. The most typical notions expressed by serial verbs in these languages include: accompaniment, direction, benefactivity, instrumental and adverbial meaning.
In Etulo, verb serialization basically refers to verb series in a monoclause that denote unified or complex events which are otherwise expressed by single verbs in many other languages. The most typical characterizations of SVCs across languages hold in Etulo (monoclausality, absence of a syntactic dependency marker, shared argument, shared negation, shared tense-aspect values etc. 'The bird has flown away'

Ideophones
A description of ideophones has been given in many West African languages such as Yoruba by Courtenay [19], Ewe by Ameka [20], Igbo by Maduka [21], Wolaitta by Azeb [22], Emai by Egbokhare [23] etc. Some of the most common features of ideophones include vowel lengthening, reduplication (partial or full), rigid tonal structure, deviant phonotactics, little or no morphology etc.
Etulo ideophones are a group of words that vividly describe or depict the nature of an activity or state which can perform a range of syntactic functions Common features of Etulo ideophones include vowel lengthening, a uniform tone pattern (with few exceptions) and reduplication. Except for the common occurrence of the relatively rare CCV syllable structure, no peculiarity is observed with the ideophones as regards their syllable structure. 26a) trɛtrɛ̀ 'bald (smooth surface)' 27b) wúūū 'sound of a moving car' b) ndrɛǹdrɛ̀ 'silky' b) tùùù 'horrible smell' c) flɔflɔflɔ̀ 'sound of shuffling feet' c) bìùùù 'extremely dark' Etulo ideophones do not constitute a distinct grammatical category. They cut across different word classes. The ideophones function as verb modifiers (adverbs), nominal modifiers (adjectives) and nominals in argument positions. In predicative function, ideophones are preceded by the low tone copula lè, linking the NP subject and the ideophone which modifies it (29b

On the Etulo Orthography
For the sake of clarity, we have adopted the use of phonetic alphabets in the presentation of our data to avoid the confusion associated with the use of a non-standardized orthography. In the scanty literature existing on the Etulo grammar, one observes a lot of inconsistencies in the orthography used by individual scholars. Take for instance the Etulo word for goat which is written in three different ways depending on the choice of the writer: mndo, undo and ndo. To avoid such confusion, there is an urgent need for a uniform graphic representation of the Etulo language. Seeing that Etulo requires a standardized orthography, its language 139 Chikelu Ihunanya Ezenwafor-Afuecheta and Inyani Adams: An Overview of Etulo: An Idomoid Language scholars/ linguists (especially native speakers) are faced with the task of drafting and proposing a generally accepted orthography. This task could be done following the principles of a good orthography such as accuracy, consistency, convenience, familiarity and economy as articulated in Williamson [24] and other similar literature. Since Etulo native speakers in Benue state are also mostly proficient in Tiv language, there is always the tendency to adopt in the Etulo orthography that which is prevalent in the Tiv orthography. This happens to be a common practice in the different versions of the graphic representations of Etulo currently in use. We propose that language scholars of Etulo origin should try as much as they can to adhere to the principles of a good orthography in articulating the Etulo orthography and resist the urge to draft into Etulo all the practices and rules that are prevalent in Tiv since both are different and full-fledged languages in their own right.

Conclusion
In this work, we have briefly touched on different aspects of the Etulo grammar, pointing out some of its phonological, morphological, syntactic and areal features. Etulo is an isolating language with a predominant SVO word order. It shares some similarities with many other Benue Congo languages. A lot work still needs to done on Etulo if it must be saved from extinction in the near future.