Vowel Harmony in the North-East Dialects of Yoruba

Abstract

This paper presents the vowel harmony system in the North-East Yoruba dialect group. The vowel system in the dialect group follows the pattern in the standard Yoruba, and other dialect groups that include the NorthWest Yoruba, South-West Yoruba and the South-East Yoruba where an incomplete or partial vowel harmony is observed. However, the vowel harmony system in the dialect group under focus provides a major evidence not found in the other dialect groups mentioned to support the hypothesis that proto-Yoruba possibly operated a ten-vowel system, and possibly also operated a complete vowel harmony system as suggested in Adetugbo (1967), Capo (1983) and Abiodun and Sanusi (1999).