PAfriLaL: Number 8 (2021) pp. 14 - 66 www.pafrilal.com.ng Oye Taiwo: Functors that Inflect for Negation in Ào 14 | Oye Taiwo: Functors that Inflect for Negation in Ào Functors that Inflect for Negation in Ào 1 Oyè Táíwò University of Ibadan, Ibadan oyepaultaiwo@gmail.com; po.taiwo@mail1.ui.edu.ng; Abstract Grammatical categories have been divided into lexical categories and functional categories. The lexical and functional dichotomy is noted in the distinction drawn between contentives or content words and functors or function words. Contentives are words that have idiosyncratic descriptive content or sense properties while functors are words, which serve primarily to carry information about the grammatical properties of expressions within the sentence. Functional categories or functors are negators, complementizers, tense, aspect, determiners, emphatic markers, imperative markers, focus markers, conjunctions/ disjunctions and genitive markers. Some of the functors listed above inflect for negation in Ào. This is because the said functors have two forms each. One form is for affirmative sentences while the second form is for negative sentences this is because negation does not have independent markers in the Ào dialect of Yorùbá hence functors such as tense, aspect, and the focus marker double as negative markers because they inflect for negation. We examine the distribution of these functors that inflect for negation in the Ào dialect of Yoruba. Keywords: Ào dialect of Yoruba, negative markers, functors/functional categories Introduction Ào is a Yorùbá dialect spoken in Ìdóàní, Àfò, Ìdógun, Ikún and Imerí in Ọ̀ sẹ́ Local Government Area; and Ìfira and Ìpèsì in Àkókó South East Local Government Area of Ondo State. Táíwò (2007a) groups Ào with the South-Eastern Yorùbá (SEY) of Awóbùlúyì (1998). South-Eastern Yorùbá (SEY) consists of Yorùbá dialects spoken by people in Ẹ̀ gbá, Ìjẹ̀ bú, Ìlàje, Ìkálè ̣, Òǹdó, Ọ̀ wọ́ and Ọ̀ bà-Ìkàrẹ́ . The enlarged South Eastern Yorùbá (SEY) is outlined in Table I below. 1 This paper is taken from Ajongolo T. O. (2005) Negation in the Ào Dialect of Yorùbá, PhD thesis, University of Ibadan, Ibadan. Ajongolo Taiwo Oyekanmi is the former name of Oye Taiwo.