Homographic, Heterophonic and Heteronymic Evidence
that Yoruba is a Language Isolate
Volume 3 - Issue 2
Seun Ayoade*
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- Department of Physiology, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
*Corresponding author:
Seun Ayoade, BSc (Hons) University of Ibadan, Independent Researcher, P.O. Box 22325, Nigeria
Received: January 28, 2019; Published: February 05, 2019
DOI: 10.32474/PRJFGS.2019.03.000157
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Introduction
In linguistics, words that have the same spelling but have
different meanings when pronounced differently are called
homographs, heterephones or heteronyms [1,2]. Apart from
English, Dutch and a few other Indo-European languages, few other
languages on earth-apart from Yoruba have so many heteronyms.
And given that many of the English heteronyms are merely verb
and noun heteronyms (e.g. the noun ‘house’ means an actual
structure for domicile while as a verb to ‘house’ means to provide
said domicile and/or place person(s) therein) the number of spoton
English heteronyms falls significantly. Also, many English and
Indo-European language heteronyms come in pairs e.g. ‘confine’ as
a noun means a boundary or limit while ‘confine’ as verb means
to restrict. On the other hand, many Yoruba heteronyms came in
trios, quartets, quintets and in rare cases septets such as the word
‘OKO’ which, depending on the pronunciation means spear, penis,
farm, vehicle, husband, stone and hoe! [3] This is seven meanings
for just one word merely by varying the pitch! It’s time for linguists
worldwide to stop burying their heads in the sand and to do the
honorable thing-officially reclassify Yoruba as a language isolate.
Introduction|
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