SUBJECTHOOD AND TEMPORAL FRAMING IN YORÙBÁ RIDDLES: AN INTERPERSONAL FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS  

• Idayat Oyenike SAKA Ph.D.

  Adeyemi Federal University of Education, ondo

  Author

• Oluwatoyin Titilayo EMORUWA Ph.D.

  Author

Language is not only used for literal communication but also for playful and culturally embedded expressions such as riddles, where meaning is exchanged interactively between the riddler and the riddlees. Agency coding and temporality shifting play significant roles in shaping participant alignment and guiding content interpretation. The study examined the subjecthood and the tense realization in Yoruba riddle-texts, with specific attention on their grammatical forms and the pragmatic instructiveness of the enigmatic import. Anchored on the Mood system of the interpersonal metafunction of systemic functional grammar, 300 purposively selected Yoruba riddle-texts were analyzed through combined qualitative and quantitative approach. The analysis shown that grammatical subjects are marked with lexical noun of 202 (67.33%) samples, pronouns of 43(14.33%) and HTS of 55(18.33%), signifying personal names as most frequent subject in riddles. Tense are indiscriminately employed with 288 (96%) of non-future tense and 4 (4%) of HTS with or without bá –the time adverbial suggesting timelessness actions. No instance of future tense was found in the data. The study concludes that subject positioning and temporal shifting in internalizing events in riddling are not merely grammatical features but central resources for negotiating responsibility and interpretive suspense in Yoruba riddles. 

1. Oluwatoyin Titilayo EMORUWA Ph.D.

   Dr. Oluwatoyin Titilayo Emoruwa is a senior Lecturer in the Department of Yoruba, Faculty of Arts, Adeyemi Federal University of Education. She obtained a PhD in Yoruba Language from the University of Ibadan in 2020. She specializes in Yoruba syntax, Morphology, Discourse analysis, and Education pedagogy.

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