LEXICAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN SELECTED POEMS OF REMI RAJI AND ADEMOLA DASYLVA
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2017
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The interest of linguists has been to understand the nature of language by exploring how linguistic resources are deployed to encode meanings in texts. However, one of the major challenges which make poetry a difficult text among literary genres is an inability to perceive the morphological devices contained in poems. This paper therefore is a stylistic analysis of how Remi Raji and Ademola Dasylva exploit their linguistic dexterity at morphological and lexical levels to invent lexical items which aptly capture their intended messages. To achieve this aim, the study attempts to: discover the morphological inventories deployed by the poets to generate new lexemes; examine how the newly generated lexemes are functionally used to contribute to the overall messages of their selected poems; and to identify the devices common to both poets and isolate those that uniquely give each poet an authorial fingerprint. The specific morphological innovations attestable in their works are done by means of lexical bisection, lexical coalescence, lexical metathesis and nonce formation. They employ the devices for meaning intensification. Also, while the devices of lexical coalescence and nonce formation are common to Raji and Dasylva, the devices of lexical bisection and lexical metathesis uniquely give them authorial fingerprints respectively. The study concludes that literary texts such as poetry, which seemingly appears impenetrable, can be easily accessible, if attention is given to the morphological inventiveness deployed by the poets.
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Olaleye, J. I., & Alabi, V. A. (2017). Lexical and Morphological Innovations in Selected Poems of Remi Raji and Ademola Dasylva. Jos Journal of the English Language, Vol. 2. 26-35.