A Contrastive Analysis Of Conjugation Of English And Igbo Verbs

For instance, an inflectional process here deals with forms of verbs: regular (weak) verb and irregular (strong) verb. There are forms of new verb formed from verb, what Tomori called morpheme  transformation  or  ablaut,  thus we have these verbs change their vowel sounds. Examples,

The    Igbo    do    not    add    inflection    like    the    English language, but Igbo verb formation process involves several affixations that does not exist in English language. Verb extension which is the addition of  a  letter  in between two or more verb root is paramount to the Igbo verb formation processes. Example, if the letter ‘r, m’ is infixed in- between two or more root word, we have a verb.

Contrastive analysis has given us the insight of the divergences of the two languages in contact showing their differences in verb formation. Other forms of  differences that exist in the English process are accentual or vocalic change pattern which I prefer to call phonological transformation  process,  which  involves  shift  in  stress  on a word to a new word class. Example,

Contrasting the above with Igbo Language verb formation processes, we  discover  that  the  Igbo make  use of the tonal pattern which does not exist in English Language unless in the  case  of  shift  in  stress  pattern which I technically called phonological transformation processes. The Igbo uses tonal marks to change a  word- class to a new word like verb. Examples,

All the examples above shows that when two languages in contact are contrasted, like English and Igbo verb formation processes, the strengths and weakness of this analectic tool is proved as in the above. Hence, contrastive analysis compares and contrasts the sub- systems of the two languages in contact, with views of finding possible areas of differences and similarities.