A Comparative Exploration of some Structures of English Language and Idoma Sentences

Abstract

This paper centers on a comparative exploration of some structures of English language and Idoma sentences. The Phrase Structure PS Rules of Transformational Generative Grammar is the analytical framework of the study. This paper draws data from different domains of language usage, using the purposive sampling technique to select viable sentences that are analysed. The findings reveal, among other things, that unlike the English language, nouns in Idoma could come before adjectives and suffixes could be added to sentences to give complete thought. A notable similarity between English language and Idoma is that they have the same placement of sentential elements except determiners and adjectives that come after the nouns. Both English language and Idoma (Agila dialect) are capable of being represented on the tree diagram. Through the deployment of the analytical framework for this study, the paper shows that the PS rules enables the identification of the uniqueness of some simple sentences in Agila in order to categorise them into various structures and to show that Transformative Generative Grammar is a viable tool for exploring the linguistic structures of Agila. The study further reveals that Idoma can be analysed side by side with the English language, especially in drawing out their similarities and differences. The study recommends the teaching of Agila language in Ado Local Government Area to acquaint the learners with the rudiments of analysing their native language using English language as a guide. This will bring the errors committed by students to a barest minimum. Consequent upon these, the study concludes that Agila dialect is unique and should be given more attention by linguists.