A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PLURALISATION IN URHOBO AND ENGLISH
A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PLURALISATION IN URHOBO AND ENGLISH
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Date
1999-11
Authors
UMUKORO, IRIRHAYOMA NEWWORLO
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Abstract
English language is an international language while the Urhobo language is a
local one that is spoken in a part of Delta State of Nigeria. This thesis aims
at a comparison of these two languages, but since nobody can claim a total
or an absolute knowledge of a language, the concept of pluralisation is,
therefore, chosen for comparison in the two languages.
This research work, "A Comparative Analysis of Pluralisation in Urhobo
and English," is basically aimed at determining the possible similarities and
dissimilarities in the manifestion of pluralisation in an international language
and in a local Nigerian language. The theory of Universal grammar believes
that all languages, no matter their composition and disposition, are not
only structurally similar but also semantically equitable. This is the reason
why this researcher looked at the meaning of the linguistic concept,
pluralisation, in both the Urhobo and the English languages.
The concept is well studied, defined and documented in the English
language, but the reverse is the case in the Urhobo language. That does
not, however, mean the absence of the concept in Urhobo. This is another
reason why the researcher looked into the concept in Urhobo to find outhow it is manifested vis-a-vis its realisation in the English language. By so
doing, the concept of pluralisation is compared in both languages. This
comparison, therefore, created the background and data for the analysis of
similarities and dissimilarities of pluralisation in Urhobo and English.
To determine the similarities and dissimilarities of pluralisation in both
languages, the researcher adapted the framework of Lado (1963:80). Lado
suggestes that for effective comparative study of vocabulary of languages,
the vocabulary be broken down into four parts. He assignes names to the
four divisions, as follow:
1. Function words: These are words which signify questions, such as
' do', ' how', ' why', ' when', etc.
2. Substitute words: These are words which replace classes of words and
several other subclasses, such as ' he', ' she', ' they', etc.
3. Grammatically distributed words: Words that show grammatical
restriction in distribution, such as ' some', ' any', ' many', ' few',
etc.
4. Content words: This class has the bulk of the vocabulary of every
language. These are words which can further be classified into
1
things', ' places', ' people', ' processes', ' qualitiess', etc.
But this resaearcher decided to assign more general names to the grouping
above to facilitate his research work. In other words, Lado (1963) was
adapted for this analysis. The "function words" were discarded because
they were not relevant to this study. The "substitute words", were given
the traditional name PRONOUNS; "Grammatically distributed words"
were named DETERMINERS; while "Content words", became NOUNS.
This was done bearing in mind that pluralisation is a nominal category in the
Urhobo and English structures.
After the analysis and comparative discussions on the data collected, the
researcher concluded that there are functional and structural similarities in
Urhobo and English plural systems, but structural and formal dissimilarities
in the plural systems of both languages.
Description
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE POST GRADUATE SCHOOL, AHMADU BELLO
UNIVERSITY, ZARIA, NIGERIA, IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE AWARD OF A MASTER OF ARTS (M.A.) DEGREE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
Keywords
COMPARATIVE,, ANALYSIS,, PLURALISATION,, URHOBO,, ENGLISH,