ANALYSE DES RAPPORTS SYNTAGMATIQUES DANS LES PHRASES EN FRANÇAIS ET EN IGBO : ÉTUDES COMPARATIVES

ANALYSE DES RAPPORTS SYNTAGMATIQUES DANS LES PHRASES EN FRANÇAIS ET EN IGBO : ÉTUDES COMPARATIVES

Abstract:

French language has its own syntactic structure which is different from that of our indigenous languages. This structural difference sometimes poses problem to the Nigerian learners of French. This study therefore focuses on the analysis of the French and Igbo sentences structures. It particularly studies the linear relations among the syntactic elements of the various sentence types in the two languages. The phrase structure rules applicable to each of the sentence types in the two languages as well as the syntactic phenomena that occur in each of the language sentence structures are examined. The aim of this study is to find out areas of similarities and differences in the French and Igbo sentence structures as well as note the syntactic traits that are peculiar to each of these two languages. The generative approach to the study of sentence structures has been adopted in this work, particularly the theory of principles and parameter. The x-bar and government modules of this theory were specifically used in the analysis of the sentence structures of the two languages. The findings of the study indicate that certain syntactic traits are common to both languages. These traits include: the notion of precedence and domination, the notion of negation, the phenomenon of embedding as well as the categorisation of phrasal elements into grammatical categories such as nouns, verbs, adjective etc. Despite the universality of these syntactic traits to both languages their application varies in each language. For example, in the case of Precedence, the head of the nominal phrase [NP] which is the noun [N] often precedes its Determinant in Igbo in contrast to French where the reverse is the case. We also noted some syntactic properties that feature in French but are absent in Igbo among which are: Passivation and Inversion. Though the notion of Relativisation exists in Igbo, relative clauses are not introduced by relative clause markers as in the case of French. Finally, we suggest among others things that the Igbo learners of French be sensitized on these differences and similarities that exist in the structural composition and disposition of phrasal elements in the two languages in order to facilitate their French language acquisition.

ANALYSE DES RAPPORTS SYNTAGMATIQUES DANS LES PHRASES EN FRANÇAIS ET EN IGBO : ÉTUDES COMPARATIVES

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