A Contrastive Analysis Of Conjugation Of English And Igbo Verbs

Igbo verbs have tenses such as present, present participle, past and present perfect tense. The above tenses are illustrated in the following chart:

From the data presented above it is observed that:
(a)    Igbo verbroot (base) could be prefixed to obtain other word verbs.
(b)    Igbo verbroot (vr+) could be suffixed to form main verbs.
(c)    Most derivatives in Igbo is by affixation to the verb through inflection or verbal extension.
(d)    Igbo verbal extension is possible by interfixing a letter in-between two verbroots.
(e)    Igbo derivational extension is possible up to three additions to the rootword for get new forms of meaningful verbs.
(f)    Igbo verbs take changes
(g)    Igbo verbs is derived by tone marking a noun to change its word class to verb.
Summary of Findings
From the data presented above, it is evident that items are prefixed, suffixed, derived, derived by internal change, derived by accentual and vocalic change, derived through shift in syllables stress conjugation by inflection of verbs into paradigms the English language.
The Igbo verbs are formed by interfix and other affixation processes, technically known as derivational and inflational processes. It also include verbal  extension and to making. These are  Igbo  language  major  processes for verb formation. This analysis shows that there are few similarities between the methods of English and Igbo verb formation. Such similarities  lie  in  the  area  of  affixation and derivation.
Areas of differences were also observed as the English language has verb ablaut, derivation through the process of adding affixes to nouns and adjectives  etc, while the Igbo language has interfixes, or middiary affixes added in between two or more verbroots for verbal extensional derivatives, and tone making of nouns to have verb word-class.