A Contrastive Analysis Of Conjugation Of English And Igbo Verbs

Chapter Three
3.0 Contrastive Analysis and Error Analysis in Language Studies
Contrastive and error analyses are basically approaches to error analysis. Contrastive  analysis  is  a good tool for comparing two languages to find out similarities and differences both in structure and formation processes. According to Anyadiegwu, “Contrastive analysis is simply based on interlingual comparison and contrast” (63). The concept of contrastive analysis is based on Osgood’s theory of transfer. According to him as (qtd by Headbloom in Anyadiegwu), a transfer is the effect of a preceeding activity upon the learning of a given task. Transfer in learning language deals  with  the  influence  of the learner’s previous language on the present language learning ( ) Anyadiegwu further perceive contrastive analysis as what could produce a scientific and descriptive comparison of languages with the aim of predicting areas that are likely to pose problems to the second language learner and thereby facilitating learning.
On the other hand, error analysis in linguistic study, studies patterns of error. According to McArthur, analysts have proposed six kinds of error, arising from inaccurate learning, inadequate teaching, wrong guessing, poor memory, the influence of the mother tongue, and the process of learning (378).
In this so view, errors (a failure in competence: a systematic fault) are part of the learner’s transitional competence and linguistic deviation from what is acceptable or normal in the rules of grammar of a language. It is naturally part of learning and methods of teaching languages. These roles of Error Analysis makes Obi-Okoye observe thus:
Error analysis is an approach that elicits information on the areas of students’ difficulties  in  language  learning  or  acquisition. It is a technique of measuring progress by nothing or identifying, recording, classifying and explaining the  errors  made  by  individuals or group of students (156).
Both contrastive and error analyses are important linguistic tools in language teaching and learning. But while contrastive analysis predicts errors learners are likely to commit in the process of learning, error analysis studies error committed by learners in the process of experimenting the use of the target language.  However, since the study involves comparing two different linguistics structures, this chapter presents the verb formations processes to determine whether the error committed are dependent on interlingual or intralingual.
1.    It is observed that no two  languages  of  the  world have the same structure. These differences and similarities could result in teaching and language learning problems. Therefore, the contrastive analysis of verb formation processes of the languages under study have shown that similarities exists as well as differences.
2.    The English verb formation processes include the affixes that is affixing nouns and adjectives with morphemes in order to form verbs. These affixes includes the inflectional and derivational processes, derivation by accentual and vocalic changes  and shift in stress on syllables. Syntactic rules of meaningful sentence construction in the English language is governed by the choice of verbs by time and tense.
3.    The truth of the above statement is witnessed in the Igbo verb formation process which differ with that of English in derivation through verbal extension, interfix of letters inbetween two verbroots, tone marking and formations into tenses. Thus, Obi- Okoye highlights that the English and  Igbo languages differ so much as Igbo is a tonal language.
This tonal system badly affects the Igbo  child in dealing with the kind of inflectional morphology that characterizes the English tense formation. The English language on its own has stress patterns, accent and information (non segmental patterns) for their verb formation examples: