A Study of Tiv and English Inflectional Morphemes

Abstract

This paper exploredthe  inflectional morphology of Tiv the and English languages. The inflectional affix is an item that performs grammatical function without changing the part of speech of the word to which it is attached. The study is an exercise in Applied Linguistics which adopts contrastive analysis as a tool in the description of the languages. The paper observes that there are some similarities and differences in morphemic distributions of the two languages. It therefore justifies the fact that differences are likely to influence teaching and learning of a language. Unlike English, the inflectional morphemes in the Tivlanguage  can also occur by alternation in tone. In other words, there are some rules on the plural formations or pronunciations. There is no set of Tiv morphemes referring to its particular gender as observed in English. Whether plural or past tense, the affixes in Tiv are only affixed at the levels of suffixation,  infixation and tone. The study concludes that difficulties in teaching or learning of English language  as L2 are often experienced in areas of differences, however, learning difficulties can also be in the areas of similarities. The study, therefore, advocates that language teachers/syllabus planners should make adequate use of the findings of contrastive or error studies as a research tool in designing syllabus for the teaching/learning of a second languages.