Structural Contrast of Determiner Phrase Items in English and Ọgba Languages

Abstract

The paper investigated selected linguistic items within the Determiner Phrase (DP) and how they operate in the syntax of Ọgba and English languages. The objectives of the paper are to investigate the morphological and syntactic deigns of selected Ọgba and English linguistic items in the DP-structures in order to find out how their differences create communicative contentions in the bilingual’s language use and to explain how the identified differentials affect grammar of the Ọgba-English bilingual. Resident in the corpus of syntax, the study made use of the contrastive analysis theory by Charles Fries and Robert Lado as its framework. The descriptive method was used for the analysis. 56 linguistic structures were investigated and the findings showed that the languages have structural variance in their designs in number derivation morphemes, tense derivation, class changing, class maintaining, determiner argument, possessive argument and vowel elision. The conceptual-intentional differentials exist both in graphic representation and in speech making which causes speech-hobble and articulatory perceptual effects usually considered unacceptable by native speakers of the English language. The position of this article is that since the trans-designated linguistic shapes and morphological differences cannot be changed. It is advisable to allow the different languages to function in their different status to retain the linguistic dignity of the Ọgba which is an indigenous language in Nigeria and the official language to avoid the colonization of one language on the other or cause one to go extinct because of preference on the other.