A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF OREDO AND OZA-AIBIOKUNLADIALECTS OF EDO

This study is based on the linguistic comparison of two different dailects of Edo language. The various dialectal variation of the Edolanguage was identified and their linguistic relationship to prove if all are mutually intelligible. Word list was analysed to find out if these dailects have a genetic and linguistic relationship. Effort was also made to compare the selected word list using parts of the bodyparts, food, nature, things, numerals, relatives, animals, professions, places and other lexical items. With these words list, cognate was used to determine the level of similarities and differences betweenthe two dialects. In addition, we used the cognates to showtherelationship that exist within these dailects, we also examinedtheenvironmental and geographical influence on the central Edoinfluence on the dailects that generated the slight dialectal varieties. Finally, the findings of the two dailects of Edo language showthat Oredo and Oza-Aibiokunla are not separate languages but dialects of the same language due to the 72.65% degree of their similarities.