Compounding in Gokana and English: A Contrastive Approach

Abstract

This paper contrasted compounding in the Gokana and English languages. This study employed the Contrastive Analysis Theory (CA). The data collection technique adopted in this study is unstructured elicitation oral interview method. The method of data analysis adopted in this paper is purely the contrastive method. The data collected in the Gokana language were glossed in the English language. It was ascertained that compounding is one of the morphological operations that result in the realization of new word in the Gokana and English languages. It was also observed from the data presented in this paper that the words that are joined to form a compound may or may not belong to the same word class or parts of speech. This study further found out that compounds in the Gokana and English languages can syntactically be classified into endocentric, exocentric, coordinative and appositional compounds. More so, it was affirmed that unlike in English language, endocentric compounds in the Gokana language has a head initial and modifier final structure. This study recommends that L2 (English language) teachers in the Gokana speech communities should be grounded in the morphological operations that result to exocentric compounds, semantic and non-semantic compounds in the English language so as to be able to assist the L2 English learners.