Igbo Preposition: A Syntactic Approach

Abstract

The form „preposition. is a closed class in the sense that it does not  accommodate new forms. Most of the Igbo grammar writers hurriedly jumped to conclusion that the Igbo language has only one preposition which is „na.. This research work attempts to join some linguists to investigate this wide spread notion. Other lexical items that function as preposition in Igbo would be tested and analyzed syntactically using transformational generative  grammar analysis. Data for the research piece were gathered through  theoretical studies, simple observations, generation of data and verbal discussions with some grammarians and linguists. The findings are that apart from „na. other lexical items like gbsr, bnyr , maka, beelusq can also function as preposition in the language. This study would be of a great benefit to Igbo scholars, grammarians and linguists.