Parameters of Intersegmental Co-Ordination in Igbo Speech Patterns: A Perceptual Analysis

This thesis examines the parameters of intersegmental co-ordination in
Igbo speech patterns using a perceptual analysis approach. The researcher
selected Akpo and Adazj-Nnukwu dialects in the Inland West lgbo dialect
cluster and Ezza and Amaezu dialects of the Northern Igbo dialect cluster
as the representative dialects for the research. This selection is primarily
based on the fact that these dialects have had little or no linguistic
investigation. From each of these four dialects, three respondents were
chosen. Additional informal speech patterns were got from the speech
activities involved during social functions. The researcher used a partially
structured oral interview approach in the coIlection of data. This was
facilitated by the use of a high quality, sensitive, tape recorder to ensure
the perceptual clarity of the linguistic data. For data analysis, the sets of
data were written down orthographically and transcribed phonetically. The
P;nglish translations for all the data were hcludcd