Èfîk tones undergo delinking and linking processes. The language has two distinctive tones: high and low, other tones are modifications of the high and low tone sequences. There are 21 phonemic segments in Èfîk: 15 consonants and 6 vowels. Findings from this study show that Èfîk has 23 phonetic consonants and 9 phonetic vowels. Thirty native speakers were selected for this study using random sampling technique. Survey and stratification methods were used in dividing Èfîk areas into three cells based on similar linguistics features. Complex and difficult sounds were selected for spectographic analysis to confirm their acoustic features. The recorded utterances were digitally transferred into Praat window and converted to wavefiled.
The list was administered on informants and yeir utterances were recorded with a midget Panasonic recording. A reduced 1700 SIL Comparative African Wordlist was used as our Wordlist. Goldsmith's Autosegmental theory (1976) is adopted as the theoretical frame for the study. The study examines the segmental, suprasegmentals and phonological processes of the Èfîk language to establish the exact phonemic status of the language with spectographic evidence.
The Èfîk language is a Lower Cross language spoken in Cross River State of Nigeria.
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