This paper is an in-depth analysis of constituent interrogatives in Central Yorùbá (CY) dialects, detailing the forms and strategies employed for them with a view to examining the features that CY dialects as a group exhibit in common. Primary and secondary data were collected and subjected to syntactic analysis. This paper adopts the split CP hypothesis of Noam Chomsky’s minimalist program (MP) of generative grammar. CY dialects use question nouns (QNs), question verb (QV) and interrogative qualifiers to form their non-echoed questions. In CY dialects, the QN kà in kabi (ka ibi) ‘where’ does not move through the spec FocP, it is externally merged at the spec-InterP. Implying that not all QNs occupy the spec FocP in constituent interrogatives in the dialects. Focus markers ni, li and ri are also optionally dropped in the dialects.

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.

The aim of this paper is to explain the syntax of yes/no questions in Ẹ̀dó language. In line with its aim, the paper answers two research questions. First, what is the structure of yes/no questions? Second, how is this structure derived? The study relies on primary data from a questionnaire survey and observation of the language in use, as well as secondary data from a textual corpus. The corpus shows Ẹ̀dó forms polar questions in two ways: the use of prosody and five question markers. This paper confirms the position of previous studies; these markers have distinct distributions. Notwithstanding, it posits Ẹ̀dó polar questions have the same structure. This submission is born out of the proposal of a split complementiser system for the language. The paper bases its argument on the lexicon, similarities between movement operations in polar questions and other syntactic processes, and the simultaneous occurrence of question markers and other types of complementisers. Analyses show question markers project a functional phrase in the proposed system; one may stack the phrase to accommodate constructions with two or more question markers. On the question of derivation, the study explains using the concept of phases from the minimalist program. This paper suggests delaying the spell-out of lower phases is more useful for checking and deleting features of the question markers.