Analysis of Clause Structures in English and Khana Languages

Abstract

- This work presented a contrastive syntactic analysis of English and Khana clause structures in order to identify their ground similarities and differences that define the syntactic organization of the two languages. English is the most spoken world language with much attention given to it by linguists. Khana as one of the indigenous languages of Nigeria has not been particularly described at the syntactic level. As its major theoretical framework, Robert Lado’s Contrastive Analysis Theory was used while behavioral theory informed the use made of Chomsky’s Minimalist Program. A qualitative descriptive approach was employed using forty clause structures which consists of simple, copound, complex and complexcampaound sentences selected purposively from both languages and then rendered in the corresponding Khana translation. The study revealed that both English and Khana language have common features as to basic syntactic pattern such as Subject Verb-Object (SVO) sentence and clause structures. There are however, several congurational differences between them in the areas of subject verb agreement, tense/aspect markers, clause linkers, the strategies of relativization and realization of subordinate constructions leading to some of the English syntactic challenges encountered by Nigerian Anglophones and indeed all speakers of Khana as a second language. It was observed therefore that English share common structural universalities with other languages and marked differences under certain structures that make the two languages unique. Based on the findings, the paper recommends, the use of contrastive linguistics in the teaching of English language, curriculum design, translation and further describe and classifying of other indigenous Nigerian languages.