DEMONSTRATIVE PATTERNS IN ENGLISH AND IZHIA

Abstract

This paper investigates the syntactic relation between the Izhia
demonstratives and those of the English language, and examines how
the demonstratives in both languages can enter into relationship with
the nouns to form determiner phrases. The study uses the Contrastive
analysis, Documentary Linguistics and the Determiner phrase
Hypotheses as effective tools as well as the analytic method for
identifying, predicting and generalizing syntactic structural similarities
and dissimilarities, which may pose difficulties in second language
learning or ease second language learning. Data used in this study were
obtained through oral interviews. Demonstratives from the English
perspective include; this, that, these and ye, yehu, ndu ye and ndu yehu
from the Izhia perspective. The findings reveal that Demonstratives in
both languages are functionally similar but structurally dissimilar, as the
English demonstratives occur only in pre-position in their DP structures
while in Izhia the reverse is the case as the demonstratives can appear
in both pre-and post-positions in their DPs, and such is acceptable and
grammatical in the language. On this premise, it is realized that the
knowledge of the dissimilarities in the structures of the L1 and the L2
can enhance proficiency and good performance in the teaching and
learning of English language as a second language. The study therefore
recommends the design of a teaching mechanism that will draw the
attention of L2 learners to the differences in the structure of both
languages.