Phoneme /l/ and its Allophones in the South-East Yoruba Dialects (SEY): An Optimality Theory Account

There is no issue surrounding the phonemic status of consonants [l and n] in the Standard Yorùbá. It is proven that consonants [l and n] are allophones of the same phoneme which establishes the fact that l~n alternation does exist in the SY. Phoneme /l/ has two allophones: [l] and [n]; consonant [l] occurs before an oral vowel and consonant [n] occurs before a nasal vowel.

There are two schools of thought on the phonemic status of consonants [l and n] in the South-East Yorùbá dialects; a school of thought accepted that consonants [l and n] are better treated as distinct phonemes; on the other hands, the other school believed that consonants [l and n] cannot be treated as distinct phonemes, rather, allophones of the same phoneme.

This study is the account of phoneme /l/ and its allophones in the South-East Yorùbá. In order to have a reliable work, the writer gathered data from two sources, namely; primary and secondary sources. The secondary source includes the published and unpublished materials used by the writer. On the other hand, the primary source the writer adopts is interview; interviewing the native speakers of the selected dialects, then, tape and note recording the information given by each informant in order to listen to it all over again for accuracy purpose. This study accounts for phoneme /l/ and its allophones in the South-East Yorùbá using Optimality Theory (OT). 

This paper investigates whether l~n alternation does exist in the South-East Yorùbá. Thus, it reveals that consonants [l and n] cannot be treated as distinct phonemes but allophones of the same phoneme. In fact, there are more to phoneme /l/ and its variants than what we know in the Standard Yorùbá (SY). Three SEY dialects were selected for this study. They are Ẹ̀gbá, Ìjẹ̀bú, and Ìkálẹ̀ dialects.

Keywords: Phoneme, Allophones, South-East Yorùbá, Optimality theory