CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.0 General Background of the Study
Language is the fabrics that ties every member of the society together, which serves as an instrument used by man for specific and distinguishable purposes. Indeed, the focus of this research is to shed light on how verb phrases are formed in Migili language. Therefore, the first chapter of this research is focused on the genetic classification of Migili language. As an introductory chapter, attempts shall be made to trace the origin, socio-cultural profile, administrative system, religion, geographical location, topography (life zone) economy, marriage rites, map, genetic classification of Migili. Effort shall also be extended to the organization of the study, theoretical framework together with a review of the chosen theory, data collection and analysis and some syntactic concept.
According to Crystal (1994: 420) syntax is the study of the rules governing the way words are combined to form grammatical sentences in contrast with morphology that studies word structure. This branch of linguistics is concerned with how words are combined to form phrases are sentences in a rule governed manner. In a nutshell, words are not together in a random order, they follow certain observable patterns in any language.
1.1 Historical Background of Migili
Migili refers to the name of a language and also a group of people. The Migili people constitute about 96% of the total population of Agyaraoju Obi Local Government, Nasarawa State in Nigeria; with a total population of about 18,000.
History has it that different tribes including Migili, Alago, Eggon all settled at Korofa Kingdom in Taraba state. It was said that a man named Akuka was denied the right to the throne and as a result had to leave Kororofa together with some other members of the Migili tribe to a place called Ukari and later to Lafia region. Some of them moved to Abuja, Minna in Niger State, Kubacha in Kaduna state.The Eggon tribe are also neighbours of the Migilis with some of them having the knowledge of Migili language.
Today, Migili language has various alternate names such as: Higili, Migili, Koro of Lafia.