IIARD International Institute of Academic Research and Development

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES (IJELCS )

E-ISSN 2545-5702
P-ISSN 2695-2157
VOL. 10 NO. 3 2025
DOI: 10.56201/ijelcs.vol.10.no3.2025.pg42.57

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A Study of Nominal and Verbal Inflections in English and Ikwerre Languages

Anujo, Victor, Florence Nne Agwu PhD

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Abstract

This paper examines and contrasts the nominal and verbal inflections in English and Ikwerre languages with the aim of identifying the areas of differences and similarities between the nominal and verbal inflectional systems of both languages. This study adopts the contrastive Analysis theory as its theoretical framework as well as the qualitative descriptive design with a content analysis approach. The data are collected directly from native speakers of Ikwerre language. The study reveals that while English nouns are inflected using the suffixes – ‘-s’ and ‘-es’ to mark number, Ikwerre nouns are inflected using the prefix – ‘ele-’ to mark same; English nouns are inflected with apostrophe and ‘s’ (’s) for singular and only apostrophe (’) for plural to mark possession, while in Ikwerre, possession is marked by placing the possession before the possessor; while English verbs are inflected to mark past tense and past participle using the suffixes – ‘-ed’ and ‘-en’ respectively, Ikwerre verbs are inflected with the suffix – ‘-le’ to mark both tenses; while verbs in English are inflected using ‘-ing’ to mark progression, Ikwerre verbs are inflected using the suffix ‘-lagu’ and the infix ‘-guru-’ to mark same. Notwithstanding, both languages mark past tense, past participle and progression by inflecting their verbs using suffixes. The study provides insights into the differences in the nominal and verbal inflectional systems of the English and Ikwerre languages. These differences pose challenges to Ikwerre learners of English as second language. It therefore, recommends that Ikwerre learners of English should be careful to note these differences in the morphemes and inflectional systems of the languages in order to enhance their acquisition of English as their second language (L2).

keywords:

Nominal, Verbal, Inflection, Tense, Second Language Learners

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