Morphological Process Through Inflectional Suffixation in English and Muna Language: A Contrastive Study

Abstract

The influence of regional grammar systems in learning English as a foreign language makes it difficult for students to use English. This study aims to find similarities and differences in the grammatical systems of English and Muna languages at the morphological level. Morphologically, English is a flexion type, while Muna is an incorporation type. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach with a contrastive study method. The data used are complex words containing inflectional suffixes in English and Muna languages. Research data in English were taken from library sources in the form of textbooks, journals, newspapers, magazines, and literary works in the form of short stories. The data in the Muna language were taken from field research in the Muna area by applying the techniques of skill engagement, note-taking, elicitation and introspection. The technique of data analysis uses ICA (immediate constituent analysis). The results show that Muna inflectional suffixes are more varied than English inflectional suffixes. It is due to the morphological type of Muna as an agglutinative language, while English is a flexion language.