A Contrastive Analysis of English and Hausa Inflectional Morphemes

Citation: Musa Galadima Toro & Al’amin Umar Kurba (2017). A Contrastive Analysis of English and Hausa Inflectional Morphemes. Yobe Journal of Language, Literature and Culture (YOJOLLAC), Vol. 5. Department of African Languages and Linguistics, Yobe State University, Damaturu, Nigeria. ISSN 2449-0660

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH AND HAUSA INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES

Musa Galadima Toro

And

Al’amin Umar Kurba

Abstract

Contrastive analysis is the systematic comparison of two or more languages, with the aim of describing their similarities and difference. The aim has been to provide better descriptions and better teaching materials for language learners. This paper is on a contrastive study of English and Hausa inflectional morphemes. The paper discusses the concept of inflectional morphemes and the inflectional process in English language. It also highlights the inflectional process in Hausa nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives, looking at the similarities and differences between the two languages. From the analysis it is discovered that there are differences in inflectional morphemes of English and Hausa such as inflections in form of reduplication of adjectives and adverbs which is not common in English.

Keywords: Contrastive analysis, English, Hausa, Inflectional, Morphemes

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Contrastive analysis is the study and comparison of two languages. This is done by looking at the structural similarities and differences of the studied languages. According to Zawahreh (2013), contrastive analysis (CA) or contrastive linguistics is considered as a part of applied linguistics whose main aim is establishing the similarities and differences between the learner’s native language and the foreign language being learned. It was developed and practiced in the 1950s and 1960s as application of structural linguistics to language teaching.

Contrastive analysis was initially introduced by Lado (1957) in his book titled “Linguistic Across Cultures”. According to him, individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings, and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign language. Uzoigwe (2011) identifies that contrastive analysis (CA) studies the differences and similarities existing between two languages that may border around different levels of study in the areas of phonetics, morphology, syntax and semantics. However, this paper examines the aspects of English and Hausa inflectional morphemes.

2.0 INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES

Morphemes consist of bases and affixes, each of which has meaning. Words can be made up of just a base or a base plus one or more affixes. Morphemes are divided into derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes. Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes that tell about tense, number, gender or possession. Tomori (1977) describes an inflectional morpheme as a morpheme that performs a grammatical function in a word without changing the word class of a particular word. Similarly, Sibani (2002) explains that inflectional morpheme as a bound morpheme create different forms of the same word by changing neither part of speech nor meaning but only refines and give extra grammatical information about the already existing meaning of a word.

Inflectional morphemes indicate syntactic or semantic relation between different words in a sentence e.g. the present tense /-S/ in writes shows agreement with the subject of the verb in third person singular. They also occur with all members of some large class of morphemes, such as the plural morpheme /-S/ which occurs with almost all count nouns in English language.

2.1 INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES IN ENGLISH

In English language, there are eight inflectional morphemes. They take the form of suffixes and are involved in all the grammatical categories (Josiah and Udoudom, 2012). They are used to create variant forms of a word in order to signal the grammatical information of such words.

The inflection morphemes in English are eight in number: –(e) s (third person singular marker of verbs in the present tense) as in lives, sleeps, teaches; - (e) s (regular plural marker) as in books, oranges, chairs; ’S (possessive marker), as in John’s house, Halima’s book; - (e) d (regular past tense marker), as in worked, danced, Jumped; - en (past participle marker) as in spoken, eaten; - ing (present participle marker) as in eating, taking, speaking; - er (comparative adjective marker) as in smaller, wider, happier; and – est (superlative adjective marker) as in smallest, widest, happiest.

The above analysis can be presented in a table as shown below for more information.

Table 1 English inflectional Morphemes

S/N	Inflection	Morpheme	Function	Example in Sentences
	Present tense inflections	- S	Used when the subject is third person singular or pronoun.	She lives in Azare Halima speaks English and French.
	Past tense inflections	- ed	Used to indicate past tense of regular verbs.	She jumped out of the track. Halima cooked some beans.
	Present tense (progressive) inflections	- ing	Used with the helping verb or auxiliary verb to form the present tense.	She is cooking some beans Amina is sleeping on a mat.
	Past participle inflections	- en	Used with the auxiliary verb ‘have’ or ‘has’ to indicate that the verb is used in past participle.	Halima has eaten the food. They have done the job.
	Plural noun inflections	- s	Used to indicate that the noun I in plural form.	I saw many books on the table. The cows are plenty.
	possessive noun inflections	-’s	Used to indicate ownership.	Halima’s books are on the table. The go’s food is in the kitchen
	Comparative inflections	- er	Used as adjective to make comparison between compare people or things.	Halima is taller than many. The lorry is bigger than a car.
	Superlative inflections	- est	Used to compare one person or thing with every other member of their group	He has the largest farm in the village. Halima is the tallest girl in the class.

2.2 HAUSA INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES

Hausa has different forms of inflection in nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives.

Inflections in nouns.

The inflections forms in Hausa are in possessive case, genitive case and plural forms. In the case of plural classes, Abubakar (2000) cited in Mahe (2001:11) identifies twenty two plural classes such as –ku, -una, -wa –ai etc suffixes.

Inflections in Verbs

Inflections in Hausa verbs are in forms of Grade System. Parson 1960 cited in Abubakar (2000) identifies six inflections in verbs according to the grading system. For example in the verbs: sayi, sayee, sayaa, sayoo and sayu.

Inflections in Adverbs and Adjectives

Inflections in Hausa adverbs are mostly achieved through reduplication which have meaning of intensity or sometimes near comparative degree (Abubakar 2000). For example: can → can-can, yanzu → yanzu-yanzu, kusa → kusa-kusa etc.

In the case of adjectives inflected forms of adjectives are achieved by reduplicating the final syllable of the base form and replacing the final vowel with a formative –eeCee according to male and female gender.

For example: Base Male Female

Sangami (huge) Sangameme Sangamemiya

Kantami (spacious) Kantameme Kantamemiya

Zadami (long) Zadameme Zandamemiya

3.0 COMPARING HAUSA AND ENGLISH INFLECTIONAL MORPHEMES

Hausa is a Chadic language spoken in northern part of Nigeria, Niger, Ghana, and some parts of African countries. It is one of the three major languages spoken in Nigeria. Due to its wide spread, it is considered the most widely spoken language in Africa. Abubakar (2008) notes that Hausa is ranked second to Swahili, as a lingua franca. It is one of the languages used as a commercial language in West African capital cities. Just like English, Hausa has inflections in nouns, adverbs and adjectives.

Inflections in Nouns

Hausa noun has three forms of inflectional forms. These are the possessive case, genitive case and plural forms (Abubakar, 2000). In the possessive case the following inflectional morphemes are identified.

Noun Possessive Case

Noun Base Example Inflection

Riga (shirt) - rigar Musa - r

Hula (cap) - hular Audu - r

Gona (farm) - gonar Kabiru - r

Wando (trouser) - wandon Ahmed - n

Kwado (basket) - kwandon Halima - n

Doki (horse) - dokin Sarki - n

In Hausa possessive case, the inflectional morphemes are in form of phonological allomorphs such as, - r, and – n while English possessive case has –s as an inflectional morpheme.

Genitive Case

The genitive case in Hausa nouns marks a noun as modifying another noun. It has the same characteristics with possessive case in English only that it shows a noun modifying another noun. For example

Base Example Inflection

Fari (light) - farin wata (moon light) - n

Kifi (fish) - kifin rijiya (well fish) - n

Madara (milk) - madarar gwangwani (tin’s milk) - r

Gona (farm) - gonar wake (beans farm) - r

In this form of inflection the allomorphs – r and – n are identified as the inflectional morphemes. This also signifies that the allomorphs – r represent feminine nouns while – n represent masculine nouns.

The Plural Case

The plural form of inflections in Hausa takes different suffixes based on the tone or structure of the noun. In this study only few inflectional morphemes of Hausa plural nouns were analysed.

– una suffix