CV Driven Resyllabification of Personal Names in Ẹdo

Abstract

Nouns in the Ẹdo language have been analysed as obligatorily beginning with a vowel. This paper examines personal names as one instance in which that previously conclusive assumption is violated. The synchronic data analysed in this study show that personal names are freely transformed in such a way that they are used with word initial consonants. The study considers this phenomenon as a resyllabification process that seeks to modify personal names to a CVCV syllable pattern. The study analysed personal names that were collected from Ẹdo speakers across the three local government areas that make up Benin city, the capital of Edo state, Nigeria. The study relies on the principles of the CV-phonology model that began in Clements & Keyser and finds that many Ẹdo personal names are functional with or without the word-initial vowels, a re-syllabified name may become meaningless, have adjusted meaning or retain its original meaning. The paper concludes that resyllabification in multi-syllabic personal names is gradual and the overall goal is to reduce them to CVCV syllable patterns.