In Ọ̀kọ, morphemes function singularly or in combination with other morphemes to realize a meaningful word. “Meaning” is used loosely here, considering that even words and phrases have no meanings of their own except as defined ultimately, by their functions in a clause (a simple sentence). There are both free and bound morphemes. A free morpheme is made up of the root or stem only – the base. A free morpheme constitutes a meaningful word and can stand alone. For example, the word óró is made up of a single morpheme. Alternatively, a word can be inflected in various ways for additional meaning. The process of combining morphemes is generally described as affixation. The most relevant affixation processes in Ò̩kọ are inflection, derivation, compounding and reduplication. More affixation tendencies may be observed in other languages.
Inflection is a kind of logical relation that holds between two or more morphemes in a word. We can further discuss this kind of relation in functional grammar terms of taxis (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004: 383). A paratactic relation holds between two free morphemes (each being a potential base), whereas a hypotactic relation obtains between a free and a bound morpheme (one that cannot exist in isolation). In a hypotactic inflection, the affix can precede the stem as a prefix; or it can succeed the stem as a suffix. Affixation processes are discussed in greater details below.
Let us now examine some of the morphological processes one by one
- Inflectional Process
Inflectional process occurs in Ọ̀kọ but restricted to the nouns and verbs classes. There are both prefixes and suffixes.
- Prefix
A prefix is a morpheme that occurs as part of a word, coming before the stem, to add to the meaning of the stem. The different types of prefix in Ò̩kọ includes genitive prefix, pronominal prefix and number prefix. Prefixes mainly occur as clitics, which means they are bound to another morpheme (the stem), and would not have an independent meaning on their own without the stem.