General Introduction

This book provides comprehensive description of Etulo, an Idomoid language spoken by few communities in Benue and Taraba states, Nigeria. Focusing on the Benue-state variety, the study offers documentation to serve pedagogical materials production and comparative linguistic studies. Fieldwork data were elicited in several fieldtrips over a number of years (2015-2022) using structured questionnaires and narrative elicitation with three consultant native speakers. The Etulo language data is transcribed using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

This study covers key aspects of Etulo grammar. It starts with the sounds (phonology) then looks at how new words are formed using affixes, compounding, reduplication (Morphology). It deploys semantic and morphosyntactic criteria to establish word classes (nouns, verbs, pronominals, qualificatives, adverbs, prepositions, ideophones etc.). It examines tense, aspect and modality features with respect to the verb. At the syntactic level, it investigates different sentence types, verb classification, verb serialization, the argument structure of the verb, how verbs can gain or lose participants (valence changes), word order, negation, copula constructions, coordination, and subordination.