Revitalization of the Urhobo language across physical and virtual spaces

Abstract

There is increasing interest in finding an effective revitalization system for safeguarding small and endangered languages. Therefore, this study explores the revitalization of Urhobo, an endangered minority language spoken by over two million people in Nigeria. The study also did a morphological and syntactic analysis of the language and the findings revealed some important aspects of the phonological and morpho-syntactic structure of the language. The syllables of the Urhobo language are open ended which ensures vowel endings. Its sound system consists of 28 consonant phonemes, and several of them can function as allophones as their interchangeable usage does not influence word meaning. Both bound and free morphemes exist in the Urhobo language, and affixation is the most common morphological process in the language.