The Concept of Affix Hopping in English and Mwaghavul

Abstract

This research is a contrastive study of affix hopping in English and Mwaghavul. It describes the processes of affix hopping and the transformational analyses of the structures in both languages. The analytical frameworks provided by contemporary scholars, Aarts and Radford, which are based on insights from Chomsky, Jackendoff and other scholars, are adapted for the analysis of sentences in this study. The study used the Transformational Generative Grammar (X-bar) approach. All the sentences analysed are obtained from Aars (2001) and Burton-Roberts (2011). From this study, it is clear that there are fewer similarities than differences in affix hopping in English and Mwaghavul. Some of the findings from the study are, in Mwaghavul, instead of the affix hopping rule being applied in simple present and past tenses, adverbs, tèn or je are used to express past tense (indicating something that has already been done or taken place) while the adverbs, wura (feminine)/wuri (masculine) or simply ra or ri are used to indicate habitual action or actions in the present simple tense. A sharp contrast between the concept of affix hopping in English and Mwaghavul is that while the basic forms of affix hopping in English occur in simple present tenses, past and also progressive tenses, that of Mwaghavul is majorly in progressive tenses. It is also obvious from the study that generally, the concept of affix hopping is not adequately utilized in Mwaghavul, just like in other Nigerian Languages like Idoma, Hausa, and Tarok explored in the study. Thus, it can be concluded that the concept of affix hopping is more prevalent in the English language than in Mwaghavul and other Nigerian languages.