A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND IZHIA DEMONSTRATIVES

Abstract

This paper investigates the syntactic relation between the Izhia demonstratives and that of the English language, and examines how the demonstratives in both languages can enter into relationship with the nouns to form a determiner phrase. The study uses the Contrastive analysis and the Determiner phrase Hypotheses as effective tools as well as the analytic method for identifying, predicting and generalizing syntactic structural similarities and dissimilarities, which may pose difficulties in second language learning or ease second language learning. Data used in this study were obtained through oral interviews. Demonstratives in the two languages include; this, that, these and those from the English perspective and ye, yehu, ndu ye and ndu yehu from the Izhia perspective. The findings reveal that Demonstratives in both languages are functionally simillar but structurally dissimillar, as the English  demonstratives occur only in pre-position in their DP structures while in Izhia the reverse is the case as the demonstratives can appear
in both pre-and post-positions in their DPs, and such is acceptable and grammatical in the language. On this premise, it is realized that the knowledge of the dissimilarities in the structures of the L1 and the L2 can enhance proficiency and good performance in the teaching and learning of English language as a second language. The study therefore recommends that there is need to design a teaching hypothesis or mechanism that will draw the attention of the L2 learners to the differences in the structure of both languages to enable them achieve international inteligibility.