ABSTRACT
This work aims at investigating the relationships that exist
between the English and the Hausa languages at the level of their
morphological processes; and the implication this relationship will have
on the teaching and learning situation. The study adopted a contrastive
analysis theory cum contrastive analysis hypothesis which is an area of
linguistic studies that deals with the scientific study of two or more
languages so as to make critical, howbeit, pedagogical comments on their
areas of divergence or convergence. The study discusses and compares
some morphological processes such as back-formation, blending
alternation, affixation, compounding, clipping, coinage, reduplication,
acronym, and borrowing in both languages using the descriptive analysis
method. The analyses were based on Kano dialect of Hausa language which
is the standard Hausa dialect. From the analyses, it was discovered
that, morphology which is the study of grammatical rules of word
structures in any language operates in both languages with significant
areas of differences and similarities; that English and Hausa use some
processes to create some words; that affixation is one of the processes
found in both English and Hausa; that some of the processes discussed in
this study could be found in one and not in other language; that Hausa
language interferes significantly on the teaching and learning of
English as a second language. This research work can be used as a source
of information or rather reference material to subsequent studies in
English and Hausa languages in various components of linguistic
structures. It would also provide a premise for the study and analysis
of morphological processes in English and Hausa. Recommendations on how
to overcome the pedagogical problems were offered and conclusion drawn.
Chapter One
Introduction
5.4 Background to the Study
Language, an indispensable tool for human communication, is studied in divergent
ways. Irrespective of the area in which it is being studied, the
most central to language and relevant to human communication is the
word. Words play an integral role in the human ability to use language
with an infinite capacity of expressions. As a result of this, word is
involved in almost all the levels of linguistic studies and analysis.
Words are generally classified into phonological, grammatical, morph
syntactic, content and function words.
It is important to note that every word in the lexicon of a native
speaker is encoded with phonological, syntactic, semantic and, above
all, morphological information. A native speaker of a language knows how
to structure the words of the speaker in accordance with the
morphological rules of the language, and also how to order the sequence
of words correctly to form expressions or sentences in accordance with
syntactic rules. The aspect of linguistics which deals with words and
their entire upshots is morphology. The goal of every morphological
study, therefore, is to discover and make explicit the rules or
principles, patterns, processes and systems that underlie the
morphological processes in a language. It is possible, for instance, to
break down Hausa word “budurwai” (girls) into smaller structural units:
“budurwai” = “budurwa” + “i". The analysis here shows that “budurwai”
(girls) can be broken down into two parts. This includes the first part
“budurwa”, which refers to something in the world (+ young + female +
human) and the second part “i” indicates a grammatical category of a
number specifying plural. The same approach can easily be applied to the
word “faraa” (started), which can be analyzed thus: “Faraa = ‘fara’
(start) + ‘a’, equivalent to English past tense morpheme (-ed).