The Structure of Idioms in Ibibio

Abstract

Idioms exist in Ibibio, a Lower Cross language spoken in Nigeria. This paper attempts an investigation of the structure of this figurative language arising from the basis that they are constituents beyond the word. It relies on the Continuity Constraint framework proposed by William O‟Grady in 1998 to explain the relationship that exists among the lexical components of idioms such that they must of a necessity occur with one another to convey the meaning they do, otherwise, the meaning changes. Data were gathered from the interactions of Ibibio speakers who reside in large numbers in Calabar, Cross River State. They were extracted by the researchers‟ native speaker knowledge of the language. It is discovered that sentence idioms which are interrogatives, declaratives and imperatives occur in Ibibio. Compound idioms are also a reality in the language as well as Noun Phrase Idioms. It has also been seen that by virtue of usage, infinitive phrase and Negative constructions exist as idioms in the language. K