A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF QUESTION FORMATION IN ENGLISH AND MWAGHAVUL

Authors: *Mary Daniel Nimram, Umeh Ann Ifeoma, Obins Nuhu Isaac, Blessing Saina’an Lagan, Daniel Nanlir Nimram & Nuhu Joseph Azi

ABSTRACT

This research is a contrastive study of the question formation process of English and Mwaghavul. Mwaghavul is a major language in Plateau State, Nigeria. It is a Chadic language while English is a Germanic language. The study describes the methods of question formation and the transformational processes of the structures of both languages. The main question this research answers is how similar or different is the process of question formation in English and Mwaghavul. An eclectic approach of the frameworks of Government and Binding and the Transformational Generative Grammar approach as provided by Aarts (2001) and Carnie (2007) are adapted for the analysis in this study. Twenty three sentences were obtained and modified (adapted) from Lamidi (2000), Aarts (2001) and Carnie (2007) and used for analysis. It is obvious from this study that there are similarities and also differences in terms of question formation in English and Mwaghavul. Some of such are that the basic forms of question formation in Mwaghavul are the yes/no (polar) question and wh- (content word) questions which are same in English language. Also, in Wh-question, the NP position at the right hand of the sentence is left empty after transformation takes place in both English and Mwaghavul sentences.  It is also evident from the study that in Mwaghavul, yes/no question has two overt question morphemes, àà and ye while wh-question has a final question morpheme ye. In yes/no question, movement is hardly involved except in yes/no question with adjunction where the subject in ‘focus’ position is usually taken over by the pronoun. In Mwaghavul, yes/no question derivation (that involves NP movement) has to do with NP movement from sentence final position to sentence initial position. It is also important to note that, in Mwaghavul language, one of the most commonly used forms of yes/no question is as a result of a rise in tone of the final syllable and the corresponding length of the final vowel sound. Summarily, yes/no question has three forms in Mwaghavul namely; yes/no question formation by adjunction, a rise in tone which occurs by lengthening the final vowel of the last syllable of a word, and yes/no question by NP movement. Thus, it can be concluded that there is a transformational relationship between the statements and their corresponding interrogative sentences in Mwaghavul language as exist in English. Contrastive studies like this are vital in language development and ensuring that endangered languages do not go into extinction.  It is discovered that Mwaghavul and English have common transformational processes.

Keywords: Question formation, Mwaghavul, lengthening, transformation, polar question, wh-question.

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