Reconstructing Proto-Igboid Morphology: A Comparative Historical Investigation of Igbo, Igala, and Idoma

This dissertation undertakes a comparative historical morphological investigation of the Igboid language family, comprising Igbo, Igala, and Idoma as primary comparison languages, with the aim of reconstructing proto-Igboid morphological features and characterising the evolutionary processes that produced the morphological diversity observable in the contemporary daughter languages. Igboid historical comparative linguistics has been constrained by the limited availability of systematic comparative morphological data and an over-reliance on lexical comparison in previous reconstruction attempts. The study assembles a primary comparative morphological database drawn from original fieldwork with native speakers across twelve communities in Enugu, Kogi, and Benue states, supplemented by existing descriptive grammars and historical vocabulary lists. Comparative reconstruction methodology follows the standard comparative method augmented by phylogenetic computational analysis to validate and refine proposed proto-form reconstructions. Proto-Igboid morphological reconstructions are proposed for verbal aspectual marking, nominal class affixes, and tonal morphological processes. Findings demonstrate that the major morphological divergences among Igbo, Igala, and Idoma are principally attributable to differential rates of simplification under contact pressure from Yoruba and Hausa in Igala and Idoma territories, while core morphological architecture is demonstrably preserved from proto-Igboid. The dissertation makes original contributions to Igboid historical linguistics and African language family reconstruction methodology. Keywords: Proto-Igboid, comparative morphology, historical linguistics, Igbo, Igala.