CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY: UDA PEOPLE/LANGUAGE
According to Williamson and Blench (2000), Uda is a language of the lower cross sub – group of the New Benue Congo family. The people of Uda occupy the area called Uda in the riverine area of Mbo Local government area of Akwa Ibom State. They are believed to belong to one of the earliest immigrants of Otong, being the ancestor of Uda people. The major occupation of Uda people are fishing and farming.
The Uda people migrated from Israel and settled first at Cameroon before migrating and settling at Ebughu. Later, they left Ebughu and moved over to their present domain. After Ebughu, the largest community in Mbo local government  area, Uda which is the second largest community shares boundaries in the North with Ebughu, South with Efiat, East  by Ewang and West with Esit Eket Local Government Area.
The total population of Uda is about 10,000 people (Ethnologue 2009). The villages in Uda community include: Udene-uda, Afi-Uda, Ekie-Uda, Uyerghe, Amprapran-Uda, Ibakka, Orukum, Udighi, and Uko-ntigha.
The principal of Uda Community Secondary School, Mr. Nyong Inyang, explained that Uda is a variety of Ebughu, Ewang and Ibibio languages and that Uda descended from a similar language family from which they derived their language. Also there are minor variations in Uda language as observed in the different villages that make up Uda.
Indeed, uda is related to Efik, Ibibio, Oro and Ebughu and such could be called language cluster as seen in the tree diagram below:
Diagram 1
1.1    STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
          The study of conjunctions has received considerable attention in linguistics. Conjunctions have also been studied under numerous labels such as linkers, coordinators, subordinators and so on. This research examines carefully the types of conjunctions found in Uda and also sets out to distinguish the grammatical, syntactic and functional features of conjunctions in Uda in order to
have a better knowledge of the use and functions of these conjunctions.
The aim of the present study discusses the functions and position of conjunctions as they appear in Uda. In addition, written texts on Uda grammar are non existent. Future researchers on this aspect of grammar, could learn a few things from this work.