- Morpheme reduplication
Morpheme reduplication is the repetition of the same morpheme as a word, usually without a change of meaning. The duplication serves the purpose of emphasis while compounding serves classificatory function. Reduplication is a process which Ọ̀kọ employs to multiply descriptive words – ‘adjectives and particularly adverbs’. It is a useful process when nominalizing an adjective; for example:
| adjective | translation | noun | translation |
| fón | “be far” | òfífon | “far one” |
| mo | “be thick” | ọ̀mọ̀mọ́n | “thick one” |
| kere | “be small” | òkíkere | “small one” |
Table 4 Pure adjectives nominalized through reduplication process
The form of adverbs (especially of manner and extent) appears similar to adjectives that have undergone derivational process to realize nominals, for example:
| adverb | translation |
| sẹ̀ẹ̀sẹ̀ẹ̀ | “slowly” |
| gìràgìrà | “hastily” |
| gbogbogbo | “entirely” |
| tititi | “until/prolonged action” |
| páràkàtà, | “hugely” |
Table 5 Adverbs with form like adjectives with reduplicated morphemes
However, reduplication in the adverbial class differs from the one of adjective above in some respects. Firstly, it is an obligatory process in the sense that a reduction in the number of syllables may yield an item that does not make sense in Ọ̀kọ. Secondly, it does not result in a change in class.
The morphological processes in Ò̩kọ language are very simple but very interesting. Below is a systemic representation of the morphological processes in Ò̩kọ. the figure shows that the entry condition for the process is the word. The process has two primary options (INFLECTION or DERIVATION. If the process INFLECTIONAL process can consist of a stem only, in which case it is non-inflected or inflectional. Inflectional morphological process can either function in the domain of possession (realised by a prefix), pluralisation (realised by an initial vowel) or identity (realised by a suffix).
For the DERIVATIONAL process in Ò̩kọ, you could have a morpheme that is non-derivational (i.e. consisting of the root only). Otherwise, it could be derivational through any of the three processes morphological processes of reduplication, compounding or complexing.
Ò̩kọ Morphological system network