A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF HAUSA AND IGALA WORD ORDER TYPOLOGY

Abstract

This work is a contrastive Analysis on Word Order Typology of Hausa
and Igala. The aim of this work is to carry out a contrastive Analysis
of word Order typology of Hausa and Igala languages. These selected
languages are from different linguistic backgrounds and typologically
have areas of differences in their sentence structures. These
differences are in the internal composition of the sentence
constituents. The research collects data from various sources
principally of secondary sources such as textbooks, journals and
articles. The study adopts Lado (1957) Contrastive Analysis and
Structural Grammar (Immediate Constituent Analysis) to analyse the
differences and similarities between the Hausa and Igala sentence
structures. The findings reveal that Hausa and Igala languages are
similar in their SVO Word order, but there are differences where the
noun phrases occupying subject and object positions in Hausa take
determiners post nominally and other elements like (demonstratives,
adjectives, etc.) pre-nominally. But in Igala, early all cases take them
post-nominally. Some of the noun phrases (object-pronoun) do not
change in Igala. Also, the verb phase in Igala has SVC (Serial Verbal
Construction) without an obstruction of conjunctions. In Hausa verb
phrase (future form), the auxiliary is separated thus, occupying the
initial part of a sentence. Lastly, sentences with dual objects, the
indirect precedes the direct object in Hausa, while in Igala, it is the
reverse.