A Contrastive Study of Noun Phrases in English and Ngwa Dialect of Igbo: Implications for Second Language Learners

Abstract

Noun phrases constitute an essential component of sentence structure and play a significant role in meaning construction across languages. This study presents a descriptive contrastive analysis of noun phrase structures in the Ngwa dialect of Igbo, Standard Igbo, and English with the aim of identifying their structural similarities and differences and examining their implications for second language learning. Data for the study were drawn from naturally occurring linguistic expressions, the researchers' native-speaker competence in the Ngwa dialect, published descriptions of Standard Igbo, and established English grammar texts. The analysis was carried out within the framework of Contrastive Analysis. The findings reveal that Ngwa and Standard Igbo share many noun phrase features, including the occurrence of nounheaded constructions and the post-head positioning of demonstratives, numerals and most modifiers. However, the Ngwa dialect also exhibits dialect-specific lexical and structural features that distinguish it from Standard Igbo. In contrast, English noun phrases are predominantly characterized by pre-head modification, overt articles, inflectional plural marking, and the placement of determiners and numerals before the noun. These structural differences account for predictable transfer errors among Ngwa speakers learning English. The study concludes that a systematic comparison of Ngwa, Standard Igbo and English provides valuable insights for linguistic description, dialect documentation and second language pedagogy. It recommends greater documentation of Igbo dialects and the incorporation of dialect-sensitive approaches into English language teaching in multilingual contexts.