GBAGYI POLAR QUESTION FORMATION: THE OPERATIONS OF VOWEL LENGHTENING AND TONAL DOWNSTEPPING

Although polar question is a phenomenon with a universal spread across all natural languages, its structural manifestation differs from one language to another. Nwankwegu and Nwode (2020:50) affirm this by stating that yes/no question exhibits varying syntax across languages, hence the need to investigate the Gbagyi formation of polar questions. Preliminary enquiry reveals that polar question formation in Gbagyi involves some phonological operations. The qualitative descriptive design is adopted to interrogate the polar question phenomenon in Gbagyi. Data for this study was primarily obtained from twelve (12) Gbagyi native speakers who are hail from and are residents of the research area, the Bwari Area Council. Following evidence from this study, the researcher proposes two mechanisms for marking polar question in Gbagyi: vowel lengthening and tone downstepping. The discovery that tone plays a pivotal role in polar question formation in Gbagyi is a pointer to further explore other types of interrogation in the language, for instance, tag questions and content question, in order to ascertain the relevance of tone and/or any other phonological feature in the expression of interrogation in the language.