HIATUS RESOLUTION STRATEGIES IN TIV
ABSTRACT
A study of hiatus as a concept shows that many languages of the world disprefer hiatus. While some completely avoid it, some devise strategies for resolving it where it is cited. Hiatus which is a phonological phenomenon whereby two different vowels occur in a juxtaposition withouty an intervening consonant has different repair strategies which include vowel assimilation, vowel elision, epenthesis and diphthong formation. Different languages use different strategies in resolving hiatus to suit the nature of their grammars.hile some use just one of the strategies, some use a few while others may use all of throse strategies. Potential vowel hiatus in the Tiv language is resolved by a number of strategies just like other languages of the world This study dwells chiefly on establishing the occurence of hiatus in the Tiv language as well as identifying the hiatus resolution strategies as are applicable in the language. The hiatus resolution strategies in the language which are vowel assimilation, vowel elision and diphthong formation are identified via a number of words that make up the data obtained. The analysis of the data is couched in one of the most current models of phonology – Optimality Theory whose emergence has brought about enormous changes in the theoretical trend of phonological subfield and other areas of Linguistics generally.