A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF TENSE FORMATION AND USAGE IN JABA AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE
A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF TENSE FORMATION AND USAGE IN JABA AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE
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Date
2008-05
Authors
YARO, MARY JAMES
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Abstract
The study investigated the use of tense forms to express time relations of different
actions or events in written English of Kanyi dialect learners of English language. It
also investigated reasons for the learners’ inability to appropriately use the tense
forms. For an effective presentation, the study was divided into five chapters. The
first chapter contained the introduction which highlighted the background of the study
and the statement of the research problem. The statement of the problem was to
investigate Kanyi (Jaba) learners’ problems with tense formation and its implication to
learning while the aim of the study was to make a comparative study and analysis of
the tense formation in English and Kanyi (Jaba) language as well as to investigate and
highlight the syntactic patterns of both languages regarding tense formation and
usage and how the differences that existed between them could affect Kanyi learners
of English as a second language. The second chapter contained some related
literature review on some related studies on contrastive analysis, second language
learning and the meaning of tense in English. The third chapter discussed the
methodology and the theoretical framework. Before selecting the theoretical
framework, some grammatical theories were discussed. These included the
transformational grammar theory, the traditional grammar theory, the systemic
functional grammar theory and structural grammar theory. Having recognized the
indepth analysis of the theories, the transformational grammar theory was selected as
the framework. The method employed in this study was the translation method. This
method was used especially if the researcher is bilingual in both languages. The
fourth chapter dealt with the analysis of the data collected by the use of different
tables for each of the tense form that was tested. The findings were brought to light
after analysing the data that was collected. It was discovered that the tense
morpheme in both languages occurred after the subject (similarity). It was also
discovered that the major difference in them lied in the use of inflections. For
instance, while English language adds the inflections ‘s’, ‘es’ to the verb when using
the present tense, and ‘d’ or ‘ed’ added to the verb when using the past tense, the
Kanyi speaker uses tone (rising or falling tone) to differentiate between the two
tenses. In English language the present tense is used in relation with the persons of
the noun or pronoun while in Kanyi (Jaba) language, the present tense is not used in
relation with the persons. The first, second and third persons take the uninflected
forms of tense morpheme or verb. The learning implications was discussed in chapter
four. It is assumed that the differences in the tense classification between the two
languages could cause problems for the learners. The last chapter contained the
summary, conclusion, further areas of research and the limitations of the study.
Description
YARO MARY JAMES
MA/ARTS/04455/2006-2007
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE POST GRADUATE SCHOOL AHMADU
BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF A
MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
IN THE
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LITERARY STUDIES,
FACULTY OF ARTS, AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY,
ZARIA.
MARCH, 2010