AN ANALYSIS OF ANAPHORA AND DEIXIS IN IBIBIO

This study examines the linguistic phenomena of anaphora and deixis in Ibibio, a Lower Cross language spoken mainly in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Anaphora and deixis are essential mechanisms through which reference is established and maintained in discourse in Ibibio. Using descriptive, the study analyzes Ibibio data obtained through native speaker intuition and elicitation. The analysis shows that anaphoric reference in Ibibio is expressed through several grammatical devices, including resumptive pronouns, reflexive constructions formed with ídém 'self‘ plus personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, and demonstratives. Deixis in Ibibio is found to operate primarily through person, spatial, and temporal systems, all of which are anchored to the speaker‘s perspective. The study further reveals that first and second person pronouns perform strong deictic functions, while third person forms are weakly deictic. In addition, the second person pronoun may be used impersonally, thereby losing its deictic force. The findings highlight the crucial role of context in interpreting reference in Ibibio and contribute to the growing body of descriptive work on Nigerian indigenous languages. Furthermore, subsequent research should employ empirical methods with diverse datasets and focus on building Ibibio corpora to facilitate computational modelling of anaphoric and deictic reference.