ABSTRACT
This research work entitled: “A Contrastive Analysis of Tiv and
English Pluralisation Processes” discusses the fact that Tiv Language is
still yearning for development as much is needed to study on Tiv
Language. This is to help develop and standardize the language through
orthograghy, morphology and phonology as at the present there is no
central orthography for Tiv Language. This is more so that most of Tiv
young generation does not know how to speak or write the Tiv Language.
In doing this, the work has attempted to identifying the various
morphological pluralisation processes and realizations that exist in Tiv
and English Languages. The study also looked at different morphological
rules that govern the use of pluralisation in the two languages and how
these morphological realizations affect the syntactic structure of Tiv
and English. Both the primary and secondary sources like interviews,
books and journals were used in the collection of data for the work and
the researcher has used the primary or the Direct Method and sampled ten
subjects from the native speakers of Tiv language by way of interview.
And it is the sample obtained from the interview that the researcher
adapted in the analysis of the Tiv data and used the secondary source in
analyzing the English data. The researcher used the Realisational
Optimality Theory for the analysis of the work. In the main, this work
contrasts the Tiv and English pluralisation processes identifying the
similarities and differences between the two. The work also hinged on
the regular and irregular plurals in Tiv Language which has been taken
for granted by speakers and researchers of the language. The work
recommends that the Benue State Government should re-introduce the study
of Tiv Language in all nursery, primary and secondary schools in
Tiv-speaking areas of the state. It is also the recommendation of the
work that future researchers on Tiv Language should study more on the
area of Tiv pluralisation and that the study of Tiv Language should be
introduced fully at the degree level in Benue State University, Makurdi
where Tiv Language is now only studied as a course unit in Linguistics.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Language, in the words of Murthy (2007:1) “is the medium of
communication through which we express our emotions, ideas, feelings and
thoughts to our fellow people”. It is an attribute that is only
possessed by human. This explains why Encyclopedia Americana (1983:727)
defines language as “the faculty and ability possessed by normal human
beings and by no other species, using spoken or written utterances to
represent mental phenomena or events”. Sapir (1921: 8) defines language
as a “Purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas,
emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.” Arising
from the above one can conveniently say that language is an essential
and a vital vehicle in communication.
The basic role of all languages is to communicate mainly among
humans. This communicative role enhances development. This points to the
reason why all languages need to be studied to facilitate the know-how
of speakers. This is the more reason why the study of pluralisation in
Tiv and English languages, with emphasis on Tiv in this case is
necessary. The purpose for the contrastive analysis of Tiv and English
pluralisation in this research is to help bring out their similarities
and dissimilarities. This research also takes care of the various ways
of achieving pluralisation in the two languages under study.
The word “pluralisation” can be defined as the inflection of a
singular noun to make it acquire a status of two or more persons, places
or things, ideas, concepts and entities. Pluralisation works to
indicate the status of a number of items.