HERE, on the language train, there is an occasional lexical feature christened, Deadly D-Words. These are words that refer to things or phenomena that are ' in alphabetical order ' dangerous, death-dealing, deleterious, detrimental, harmful, injurious, life-threatening, mortal, noxious, poisonous, toxic, or unhealthy, and which begin with the letter 'd.'As you know, there are many things in life that are deadly, but not all of them are referred to with words that begin with the letter 'd.' For example, 'tyranny' is a phenomenon that is deadly, but the word does not begin with the letter 'd.' However, label the phenomenon you call tyranny 'dictatorship,' and, voila, you have a deadly D-Word on your hand! Can you fancy the mystique of language'For any country, there is this deadly D-Word that must be seen as the ultimate. It is a word whose frequency in daily discourse may serve as a barometer of the state of a nation, for whenever the word gravitates from the minds of men into their lips, and, from their lips, leaps into the airwaves or pages of newspapers, we can use it to determine whether the state of the union is wholesome or unwholesome, strong or weak. In other words, the appearance and frequency of the word is a measure of the degree of a nation's unity, manifest or latent.To the best of my knowledge or experience, this very word started rearing its ugly head in the heydays of Military Dictator Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, after the self-styled Evil Genius, a.k.a., Maradona, annulled the June 12 elections in 1993. It reached its crescendo during the reign of Military Dictator Sani Abacha. During the short reign of Abacha's successor, General Abdulsami Abubakar, the frequency of the word in daily discourse decreased, significantly.It may be noted, however, that the decrease was only nominal, for it gave birth to a demand captured by a phrase that had the deadly D-Word as its potent sub-text. That phrase was the 'Sovereign National Conference,' fondly abbreviated by its advocates as SNC. Ah-h-h-h, with the mention of the SNC, I have let the cat right out of the bag, and I'm sure that you now know the deadly D-Word whose resurgence is on parade today.Rack your brain no more, for here is the deadly D-Word! The headline of a big news story in THISDAY of January 23, 2012 read: 'Gov Aliyu: Nigeria Risks Disintegration by 2015.' And as if to say that 2015 is too far away, the headline of a news story in the Vanguard of just two days later blares forth: 'Nigeria is already disintegrating ' Soyinka.' Hey, what is happening to SONU, I mean, the State of the Nigerian Union'The lead of the news story in THISDAY reads, thus: 'Niger State Governor Muazu Babangida Aliyu has warned that the country could disintegrate by 2015 if the government continues to treat acts of treason and terrorism with 'kid gloves.'' Ask me not the acts the governor is talking about, for any attempt to answer that question would derail the language train!'Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka,' reads the lead of the news story in the Vanguard, 'said, yesterday, that despite the fact that there is no formal break up of the country, the nation was already disintegrating due to the refusal of the government to embrace national dialogue.' As a matter fact, such a dialogue was what The Nation highlighted in the headline of its story about the same event: 'National Conference a must, says Soyinka.'If you don't mind, let me give you a lowdown on the morphology of this deadly D-Word, disintegration, which, I'm sure, you will find both fascinating and foreboding. I must confess, however, that I lack the flair to describe it adequately. But I'll try. You see, disintegration is a unique lexical union, for it contains two major morphemes, the second of which may be further broken down into two other morphemes; and the first of these two other morphemes could further be broken down into two other morphemes, going by its original root.Phew, if you find that confusing, then, I've got you exactly where I want to! But before I try to expatiate, let me say, God forbid. Truth be told, do you know that if Nigeria were to be hit by this phenomenon called DISINTEGRATION, the process would be as confusing as the morphology of the word itself' To begin with, 'disintegration' comprises two major morphemes, dis- and integration. If we could extrapolate that to the political union called Nigeria, would we, first, break it down to the two main parts, that is, the Northern and Southern Protectorates, which Lord Lugard amalgamated in 1914'Interestingly enough, that is not what the morphology of disintegration dictates, for the second morpheme, 'integration,' is made up of yet other morphemes. To be sure, a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning. Basically, integration breaks down into a stem and a suffix, 'integer' and '-ion,' respectively. Every mathematician knows what an integer means: a whole number.However, mathematics is not linguistics, and if you search the word, integer, further, you will find that it is not a whole, ironically, for it is made up of two units: in-, a prefix, and teger, which is the base of tangere. The former is Latin, meaning 'not,' andthe former is also Latin, meaning 'to touch;' hence, an integer is some number that you do not touch; it is an entity, something that is complete in itself. Its opposite is 'fraction,' so to disintegrate is to 'fractionalise.'Granted that disintegration, in essence, can be broken down, first, into two, and, ultimately, into four morphemes, that is, lexical units, the question is, how many political units can Nigeria be broken down to' You can see that I am not talking politics, at all, just employing linguistics to explore the mathematics, or, rather, the mathematical possibilities, of disintegration!As we were saying, there is a resurgence of the ultimate deadly D-Word. It may not be on the front burner of Government, but it is on the front burner of civil society, or, at least, groups that arrogate to themselves the right to represent civil society. Evidence: 'National conference'll prevent disintegration ' Group.'That is the headline of a news story in The Punch of January 27, 2012. The lead of the story reads: 'The International Society for Social Justice and Human Rights has said that only a Sovereign National Conference can stop Nigeria from disintegration.' All said, the morphology of this lexical union known as disintegration seems to have something in common with the structure of the political union called Nigeria, but concerning that 'something,' all I can say is: 'je ne sais quoi!
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