A Contrastive Analysis of Pluralisation of Nouns in English and Ikwerre (Omuanwa): Implications for the Second Language Learner

Abstract

Human language is rule-governed. These rules are innate in the native speakers and vary from one language to another. The variations in the morphological and syntactic structures in languages pose difficulties to the second language learner in the target language. This paper therefore, examines and contrasts the plural formation of nouns in English and Ikwerre (Omuanwa) with a view to identifying the morphological and syntactic structural differences associated with pluralisation which may pose difficulty to the second language learner. The theoretical framework adopted is Contrastive Analysis (CA). This paper revealed that there is an overwhelming difference between plural formation of nouns in English and Ikwerre (Omuanwa) as English plural markers are suffixes while Ikwerre plural markers are prefixes. While English is full of irregularities and a lot of exceptions to given rules of pluralisation, most nouns in Ikwerre form their plurals by using plural markers which are free morphemes before the host. This paper therefore, recommends that second language learners of English whose first language is Ikwerre should make conscious effort to learn the plurals of words in English the way they are, so as to use the correct plural forms of words in English sentences.