vCentral Nigeria is a
sort of ‘heartland’ for systems of plural verbs; all
languages have them and they are very different from one
language to another
vThis is in part because
a number of language families with residual systems
have come into intensive contact and influenced and
reinforced each other’s systems Central Nigeria is a region where morphologically marked plural verbs are
extremely common, although the linguistic literature yields few descriptions.
Strikingly, plural verbs strategies cross boundaries of both language
families and phyla. The uses of plural verbs can be categorised as
follows;
–1. Describing an
action repeated many times (iterative)
–2. Describing an
action with multiple subjects (distributive)
–3. Describing an
action with multiple objects (distributive)
–4. Describing an action conducted over a long time (durative) (sometimes
merging with imperfective)
–5. Describing the
intensity of an action
•Any combination of these