MORPHOLOGICAL STUDY OF COMPOUNDS IN TWITTER POSTS ON THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

This study aimed at examining morphological processes known as compounding that was found in  twitter handle of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on the COVID-19 pandemic. It specifically analyses compound words that have emerged as a result of corona virus outbreak. The data for the study was generated from online sources and it was sourced from the posts of March, April and June, 2020. The sample size of this study was fifteen (15) compound words using purposive sampling technique. The study employs a descriptive model to carry out its investigation. The model that was used is by Haspelmath and Sims (2010) where a compound is seen as a complex lexeme that can be thought of as consisting of two or more base lexemes, the item and arrangement and item and  process are the operative morphological approaches considered in identification of compound words in the NCDC twitter handle. The procedure for data analysis is through the identification of compound words in order to distinguish the morphological processes used in their formation and was analysed based on their classification and patterning. It was found that, the most morphological processes  identified in the compound words used by the NCDC twitter handle were acronym, backformation and neologisms. It was also found that through qualitative method and the use of Haspelmath and Sims (2010) opinion concerning item and arrangement and item and process approach, all the compound words used by the NCDC have their semantic head inside the complex structure are described and most  of the compound words found are compound nouns; as such they take the greatest percentage of the compound words analysed.
Keywords: Morphological Processes, Compound words, Neologisms, Acronym