Compounding As a Morphological Process in Igbo in Respect to the Concept of Endocentric and Exocentric within the Compounds

Abstract

A morphological process is a means of changing a stem to adjust its meaning to fit its syntactic and communicational context, morphological processes serve different functions. Some occur to alter meaning and/or part of speech (derivational) others shows grammatical relationship between words (inflectional). There are various types of processes but the principal’s source of word formation in Igbo is compounding. Compounding, which is also refers to as composition is the morphological process that has been variously defined as the combination of two or more lexemes. It is also a part of derivational morphology that is universally recognized and commonly used for enlarging the vocabulary of any language (Fromkin Redman and Hyams 2011). In discussing compounds, a distinction is usually drawn between endocentric and exocentric compounds. For Booij (2005) compounds have a binary structure. That is a compound consists of a combination of two words in which one word modifies the meaning of the other.