ABSTRACT
This work is seen to reveal the
difficulties and challenges in learning English as a second language especially
in non- native background of Igbo speaking students in Lagos state University, (LASU)
Ojo.
To carry out this exercise, the
researcher visited the students, recorded their first and second languages with
the use of a questionnaire which has two parts (A and B). Part A consists of
personal data of respondent while Part B is an investigation on the project
topic that deals with the difficulties encountered by Igbo speaking students
learning English as their second language at Lagos State University.
This process has a sample technique,
introduced to review a population census randomly selected to complete each
questionnaire. The questionnaire is arranged in columns and boxes .The
descriptive research design was used to take a constructive look at syntactic
features of English and Igbo languages reflecting how they are being achieved.
It is
evident in the research to note similarities between English syntax and
Igbo Syntax; except for interference problems; like the influence of the mother
tongue prepositions are many in English language, and there is no single word
adverb in Igbo language. There can't be more than one preposition in lgbo. Linguistics should insist on utilizing mother
tongue experiences for effective second language teaching and learning in Nigeria.
There should equally be in place a language education policy in Nigeria whose
total commitment will rest on the supervision of language development in the
Nation.
TABLE OF CONTENT
Title Page i
Certification ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgement iv
Abstract v
Table of Contents vi
CHAPTER ONE:
1.1 Introduction 1-3
1.2 Background 4-6
1.3 Statement of problem 6-8
1.4 Purpose
of Study 8-9
1.5 Research Question 9
1.6 Research Hypothesis 10
1.7 Scope of Limitation of Study 11
1.8 Operational Definition of Terms 11-20
CHAPTER TWO :
2.1 Review of Related Literature 21
2.2 The Concept of Language Acquisition 21-24
2.3 Some Syntactic Features of Igbo Language 25-31
CHAPTER THREE:
3.1 Methodology and Research Procedure 32
3.2 Research Design 32
3.3 Sample and Sampling Techniques 32
3.4 Procedure 33
3.5 Data Analysis 33
CHAPTER FOUR:
4.1 Presentation and Analysis of Data 34-36
4.2 Analysis 37-41
CHAPTER FIVE:
5.1 Discussion and Interpretation of Result 42-43
5.2 The Implication of Study 43-44
5.3 Recommendation 44-45
5.4 Suggestion For Further Research 45-46
Reference 47-48
Questionnaire
49-52
CHAPTER ONE
1.1 INTRODUTION
English and Igbo Language belong to
two different families of language. English belong to the Germanic group of the
indo-European family while Igbo is of the Eastern family, Oluikpe (1996:7).
This genetic difference in the two languages in contact entails a possible
contrastive analysis of the syntactic structure inherit in the two languages.
they may have seen then as having the relationship of mother tongue (L1) and
second language (L2) in terms of their users.
The most obvious evidence of the
linguistic influence of English- induced structures into a Nigerian language
(Bamgbose 1995:9) and vice versa,---- is paralleled to code-mixing.
The phenomena of code-mixing occurs
as a result of languages in contrast. Essien (1995:271) says that:
"code-mixing
occurs when the speaker, Or the initiator of speech, changes From one language
or code to another depending on the situation, audience, subject matter etc.
Thus, mutual linguistic influence in
any situation of language contact is usual. Just as English has influenced
Nigerian languages, so have these languages influenced English. The term
'Nativization', which has now been, generally accepted for describing the Indigenization
of English in a second language environment (kachtu 1992: 48-74) adequately
summarized the nature of this influence.
Nativization of English in Nigeria is
not limited to the usual features of transfer of phonological, lexical,
syntactic and semantic patterns of Nigerian Languages in Nigeria. It is also
concerned with the creative development of English Language, including the
evolution of distinctively Nigerian usages. Creativity manifests itself in
various ways: first, expressions are coined to reflect the Nigerian experience.
Second, authentic Nigerian native
idioms are translated into English in such a way as to reflect the mood of the
situation or character.
The features are not merely
deviations from the norms of standard English, but from features which
characterize standard Nigerian English. Standard Nigeria English can be
understood internationally and thus it is accorded worldwide prestige and
internationally accepted. Regional variations of Nigerian English with first language
prompted features such as Hausa English, Igbo English and Yoruba English etc.
are considered non - standard and are not formally acceptable even in Nigeria.
Although, standard in English is not
a case that all native speakers of English pronounce words in the same way,
most users of the 'new English" accept the existence of standard but are
unable to distinguish it from normal English.
Platt et al (1998: 304) says that:
'The
only way to show that language features Are not idiosyntactic learners errors
but part of A language system of a new English is to prove Statically that:
Standard in English is the dialect
most used by the educated members of the society. It is the form used in
government, public records, official pronouncements and the media. This dialect
is accorded such widespread social acceptance that it has become first among
equals. In this light, the term standard can be extended to the English of such
countries like India, Nigeria, Ghana, Singapore etc. These varieties are
grammatical with local inp
Randolph Quirk (2002:24) gave a more
distinguished definition of standard English as what the speakers accept as
"normal English". He also Said that standard English is that
"which the least attention to itself."
In the light of the above discussion
on English, it is completely apparent that the English usage of some part of
Nigeria-particularly the Igbo, is neither a standard variety of Nigeria English
nor acceptance "normal English" even within the Igbo community. It is undoubtedly unacceptable and draws an
unusual attention to itself. Yet, its prevalence among Igbo speakers of English
makes it a verifiable investigative phenomenon as I hope to do in this project.
1.2 BACKGROUND
TO THE STUDY
Language has been, described as men's
most priceless. It may be considered as man's crowing achievement for various
reasons.
Language permits man the enormous
wealth of contemporary as well as historical knowledge that would be beyond his
grasp if based solely on his personal experiences. Language permits a variety
of efficient and subtle modes of communication for expressing his innermost
feeling and thought ranging from the poetic and musical, to the present and the
concrete and transcends time and space.
In Nigeria, estimate have ranged from
200 to 400 distinct indigenous languages that fulfill some of these mentioned
functions. This makes Nigeria as a multilingual
society. In addition, English Language, though a colonial language, has
remained in Nigeria. Subsequently, the British colonial masters to Nigeria.
Bamgbose (1995: 35) remarks that:
..... of all the
heritage left behind
In Nigeria by the
British at the
End of colonial
administration,
Probably none is
more important
Than the English
Language
English language is language of
government, commerce and business, education, the mass media, literature and
much internal as well as external communication. In regard to this, one can
then infer that the English language is very important in the national and
social life of Nigeria.
However, the language being an alien
language is not the language orientation of a child born in a typical Nigerian
community where the mother tongue is probably, lgbo, Hausa, Yoruba or Efik as
the case may be. Therefore the child born into the Nigerian community is faced
with a complex language situation. He battles with the problem of mastering his
own indigenous language and gaining a good command of the English language.
The co-existence of English with 400
or more indigenous languages in Nigeria has produced numerous repercussions.
One such repercussion is the aspect of linguistic nativization which includes
Nigerian language vowels and consonants for English ones; replacement of stress
by tone; introduction of culture-specific vocabulary items, preposition
combinations and some Ll-induced syntactic structure. These features have been
extensively discussed in the works of Bamgbose (1995), thus the present form or
status of English in Nigeria is a result of the contact between English and
Nigeria language in the socio-cultural and political situations.
1.3 STATEMENT
OF PROBLEM
It have been observed that our first
language or mother tongue (Ll) has a continuous and dominant influence on all
languages we subsequently acquire as our second or foreign language (L2). All attempt to suppress Ll (if seen as a
hindrance to effective second language learning will yield no genuine result
because it is fruitless. Instead, the level of proficiency of the L2 in
question, as it is the case with English in Nigeria, will be falling within and
outside the educational system and with it, understandably, the general level
of education.
Specifically, the falling standard in
the English usage of Igbo undergraduates in particular had been attributed to
mother tongue negative transfer, false hypothesization or over generalization.
Oluikpe (1996:147). Other usage problems had been caused by inadequate
knowledge of special syntactic features of certain words and expressions in
English. Consequently,
Specifically, the falling standard in
the English usage of Igbo undergraduate in particular had been attributed to
mother tongue negative transfer, false hypothesization or over generalization.
Oluikpe (1996: 147). Other usage problems had been caused by the inadequate
knowledge of special syntactic feature of certain words and expressions in
English. Consequently, the English actually used by undergraduates differ in
various ways from standard English. This clearly makes for a complex study of a
contrastive analysis of the two languages which stand in the relationship of L1
and L2.
There are many features in the
structures of English sentences that are not found in Igbo sentence structures
and these contrast present learning and usage problems. This is probably the
reason why the concept of “straight
for English" technique put forward as a solution for solving the language
problem in some multilingual African countries will never yield result. Until
the featured of mother tongue (MT) are recognized and incorporated into the
already mapped out insights into the effectiveness of English language teaching
and learning; particularly the teaching and learning of the language among Igbo
undergraduates in the Department of English whose Ll is Igbo language. Thus the problem of usage especially in
English syntax is a measure of the failure of utilizing mother tongue experiences
for effective second language teaching.
1.4 PURPOSE OF STUDY
The study is primarily concerned with
the syntactic problems encountered by Igbo speakers of English and how their
first language affects subsequent acquisition of other languages, particularly
English language. The methodology will enable us determine for instance, the
collocational possibilities and the degree of problems encountered by students
as there is no clues (morphological or syntactic) to fix precisely the
acceptable collocational patterns.
The significance of this methodology
affords the students the following opportunities: A careful examination of how
the only preposition in Igbo ‘n' a' variously translated in English as in at on
etc, influence the use of English prepositions; the implications to the
existence of mother tongue interferences with the target language as evinced in
the non-use of articles, instances of their superfluous usages', and
irregularities in idiomatic usages, whether the absence of absolute genitives
in Igbo, that is, the possessive determines for instance mine, ours, yours,
theirs, as we have in English, presents usage problems in structures where the
attributive genitives, that is, simple possessive determiners such as, my, our,
your, their, is required, mention will also be made of the distribution of
determiners in Igbo language and their equivalents in English.
Finally, the process of embedding in
the two languages will be discussed.
1.5 RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
1.
To what extent is nativization of
English not limited to Ll negative transfer?
2.
How does the Igbo syntactic
structures affect the English usage of Igbo undergraduates?
3.
To what extent is the communicative
competence of English dependent on the user's consistent effort to always
practice with English in both formal and informal settings?
4. Is
there any relationship between English and an Igbo syntax?
5.
To what extent is 'Igbo English'
distinct from other regional varieties of English in Nigeria such as ‘Hausa English' , 'Efik English' or
Yoruba English?'
1.6 RESEARCH HYPOTHESES
Within our context, we have the
cognition of some apparent hypotheses that could form our research basis. These
hypotheses include the following:
1.
Nativization of English in Nigeria is not
limited to the usual features of transfer or phonological, lexical, semantic,
but extends to the syntactic patterns or Nigerian indigenous languages into
English language.
2.
Regional variations in standard English
with first language prompted features such as Igbo English are considered
non-standard and are therefore not formally acceptable even in Nigeria.
3.
There is a conscious effort by Igbo
speakers of English to aspire towards approximation of the native speaker level
of performance.
4.
We can tell an English usage with
Igbo language prompted features by merely examining the text or listening to
the accent.
5.
Students encounter syntactic problems in
specific areas like borrowing, coinage, adaptation and translation of certain
Igbo linguistic features into English.
6.
Most of the contrastive analysis on the
syntactic structures of both languages are not reliable and are detrimental to
the students' competence and performance of the two language in contact.
1.7 SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF STUDY
The study shall be concerned only
with the undergraduates of the University of Lagos whose Ll is Igbo language.
This implies that we are not interested in the English usage of the average
Igbo primary school leaner, low grade workers in establishments, most
university dons, editors and judges.
Our method of approach will be
descriptive and as such will depend on analysis of data.
The significance of this endeavour
will afford future researchers the reference and motivation to do research on
English usage problems, especially of second language users.
1.8 OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF TERMS
Every human knows at least one
language, spoken or signed. Linguistics is the science of language,
including the sounds, words, and grammar rules. Words in languages are finite,
but sentences are not. It is this creative aspect of human language that sets
it apart from animal languages, which are essentially responses to stimuli.
The rules of a language, also called
grammar, are learned as one acquires a language. These rules include phonology,
the sound system, morphology, the structure of words, syntax, the combination of words into sentences, semantics, the
ways in which sounds and meanings are
related, and the lexicon, or mental dictionary of words. When you know a language,
you know words in language, i.e. sound units that are related to specific
meanings. However, the sounds and meanings of words are arbitrary. For the most
part, there is no relationship between the way a word is pronounced (or signed)
Knowing a language encompasses this
entire system, but this knowledge (called competence)
you may know language, but you may also choose to not speak it. Although you
are not speaking the language, you still have the knowledge of it. However, if
you don't know a language, you cannot speak it at all.
There are two types of grammar:
descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive
grammar represent the unconscious knowledge of a language. English speakers
for example, know that lime likes
apples" is incorrect and "I like apples" is correct, although
the speaker may not be able to explain why. Descriptive grammar do not teach
the rules of a language, but rather describe rules that are already known. In
contrast, prescriptive grammar dictate
what a speaker's grammar should be and they include teaching grammars, which
are written to help teach a foreign language.
There are about 5,000 languages in
the word right now (give or take a few thousand), and linguists have
discovered that these languages are more alike than different from each other.
There are universal concepts and properties that are shared by all languages,
and these principles are contained in the universal
Grammar. Which forms the basis of all possible human languages.
Morphology
and Syntax
MORPHEMES
are the minimal units of words that have a meaning and cannot be subdivided
further. There are two main types: Free bound morphemes can occur alone and
Bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. An example of a free morpheme
is "bad" and an example of a bound morpheme is "ly". It is
bound because although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone. It must be
attached to another morpheme to produce a word.
FREE MORPHEME: bad
BOUND MORPHEME: ly
WORD: badly
When we talk about words, there are
two groups: lexical {content} and function
(or grammatical) words. Lexical words are called open class words and
include nouns, verb, adjectives and adverbs. New words can regularly be added
to this group. Function words, or closed class words, are conjunctions,
prepositions, articles and pronouns, and new words cannot be (or are very
rarely) added to this class.
Affixes
are often the bound morpheme. This group include prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes. Prefixes are
added to the beginning of another morpheme, suffixes are added to the end,
infixes are inserted into other morpheme, and circumfixes are attached to
another morpheme at the beginning and end. Following are examples of each of
these:
Prefix: re-added to do produces redo
Suffix: - or added to edit produces
editor
affixes are added to the end of an
existing word for purely grammatical reasons. In English there are only eight
total inflectional affixes:
-s 3rd
person singular present she
waits
-ed past tense she waited
-ing progressive she’s eating
-en past
participle she has
eaten
-s plural three apples
-‘s possessive Lori’s son
-er comparative you are taller
-est superlative you are the shortest
The other type of bound morpheme are
called bound roots. These are morphemes (and not affixes) that must be attached
to another morpheme and do not have a meaning of their own. Some examples are
ceive in perceive and mit in submit.
English
Morphemes
A. Free
1. Open class
2. Closed class
B. Bound
1. Affix
a. Derivational
b.
Inflectional
2. Root
There are six ways to form new words.
Compounds are combination of words, acronyms
are derived from the initials of words, back-formations
are created from removing what is mistakenly considered to be an affix, abbreviations or clippings are
shortening longer words, eponyms are
created from proper nouns (names), and blending
is combing parts of words into one.
Compound: doghouse
Acronym: NBA (National Basketball
Association) or scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus)
Back-formation:
edit from editor
Abbreviation:
phone from telephone
Eponym: sandwich
from Earl of sandwich.
Blending: smog
from smoke and fog
Grammar is learned unconsciously at a
young age. Ask any five year old, and he will tell you that “I eat" and" you eat", but
his "dog eats." But a human's syntactical knowledge goes farther than
what is grammatical and what is not. It also accounts for ambiguity, in which a
sentence could have two meanings, and enables us to determine grammatical
relationships such as subject and direct object. Although we may not consciously be able to
define the terms, we unconsciously know how to use them in sentences.
Syntax, of course, depends on lexical
categories (parts of speech.) you probably learned that there are 8 main
parts of speech in grammar school. Linguistics analyzes words according to
their affixes and the words that follow or precede them. Hopefully, the
following definitions of the parts of speech will make more sense and be of
more use than the old definitions of grammar schoolbooks.
Open Class Words
+ plural endings Det. Adj. _ (this is called
a noun phrase)
Nouns
_____ "the
big dog”
"dogs"
+ tense endings Aux. _______ (this is called
a verb phrase)
Verbs
____ "have
spoken"
"speaks"
Adjectives
_____+ er
/ est Det.
______ Noun
"small" " the smaller
child"
Adj.
+ ly ______
Adj. or verb or Adv.
Adverbs “quickly" "quickly ran"
Determiners
a, an, the, this,
that, these, _______ Adj. Noun
those,
pronouns, quantities "this blue book
Auxiliary
Verbs forms of be, have,
may, NP _____ VP
can,
shall "the
girl is swimming"
prepositions
at, in, on, under, over ,of ___NP (this is called a prepositional phrase)
"in
the room"
Conjunctions
and, but, or N
orV or Adj.
"apples
and oranges"
Sub
categorization defines the restrictions on which
syntactic categories (parts of speech) can or cannot occur within a lexical item.
These additional specifications of words are included in our mental lexicon.
Verbs are the most common categories that are sub categorized. Verbs can either
be transitive or intransitive. Transitive
verbs take direct object, while intransitive
verb take an indirect object{ usually they need a preposition before the
noun}.
Transitive verb: to eat I ate an apple. (direct object)
Intransitive: to sleep I was sleeping in the bed. (indirect
object)
Individual nouns can also be sub
categorized. For example, the noun idea can be followed by a prepositional
phrase or that and a sentence. But the noun compassion can only be followed by
a prepositional phrase not a sentence. Ungrammatical sentence are marked with
asterisks.
The idea of stricter laws his compassion
for the animals
The idea that stricter laws are
necessary *his compassion that the animals are hurt.
Phrase
structure rules describe how phrases are formed and in what
order. These rules define the following:
Nouns phrase (NP) (Det.) (Adj.) Noun (PP)
Verb phrase (VP) verb (NP) (PP)
Prepositional phrase (PP) prep. NP
Sentence (S) NPVP
The parentheses indicate the
categories are optional. Verbs don't always have to be followed by
prepositional phrases and nouns don't always have to be preceded by the word
"by" adjectives.
Passive
Sentence
The difference between the two
sentences "Mary hired Bill" and "Bill was hired by Mary" is
that the first is active and the second is passive. In order to change an
active sentence into a passive one, the object of the active must become the
subject of the passive. The verb in the passive sentence becomes a form of
"be" plus the participle form of the main verb.
And the subject of the active becomes
the object of the passive preceded by the word “by."
ACTIVE
PASSIVE
Mary hired Bill. Bill was hired by Mary
Subject + Verb + Object Object + "be" + Verb + by + Subject
Part
Three: Phonetics and Phonology
There are three types of the study of
the sounds of language. Acoustic phonetics is the study of the physical
properties of sounds. Auditory phonetics
is the study of the way listeners perceive sounds. Articulatory
phonetics (the type this lesson is concerned
with) is the study of how the vocal tracts produce the sounds.
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