Abstract
This paper examines the parametric variations of English and Kanuri noun phrases (NPs) within the theoretical framework of Principles and Parameters (P&P), and the study adopts Chomsky’s (1995) Minimalist Approach (MA). In conducting the research, the researcher uses his native intuition to collect the data for this study. The secondary sources of data involve the use of three competent native speakers to validate the data. The outcome of the study reveals that there are differences and similarities between the two languages which are genetically different –Kanuri Nilo is a Saharan language while English is an Endo European language. The differences are: Kanuri is a head final language while English is head initial language. On the complement phrases, the two languages share dissimilarities –quantifiers and adjectives occur post head in Kanuri while the quantifiers and adjectives occur pre-head in English. Finally, the two languages share similarities in terms of noun plural formation morphologically suffixed to post head nouns and definiteness and agreement features [-Def] [+PL Num].
Highlights
This paper discusses the parametric variations between English and Kanuri languages
This paper examines the parametric variations of English and Kanuri noun phrases (NPs) within the theoretical framework of Principles and Parameters (P&P), and the study adopts Chomsky’s (1995) Minimalist Approach (MA)
This paper examines the parametric variation of NPs in Kanuri and English –where similarities and differences are examined using the MA
Summary
This paper discusses the parametric variations between English and Kanuri languages It covers the following settings: whether any particular language has an overt head constituent or not, whether the head of any phrase positions after or before the complement word (i.e., head-last or head-first). This principle constitutes the theoretical basis for this paper. Radford (2004) further observes “ In all these descriptions, the one to which the phrase is referred or belongs is called the ‘head’ (H) of the phrase since the head of the phrase determines the grammatical properties of the complement and the other which completes the head is the ‘complement’ of the phrase” The one to which the phrase is referred or belongs is called the ‘head’ (H) of the phrase since the head of the phrase determines the grammatical properties of the complement and the other which completes the head is the ‘complement’ of the phrase” (p. 72). Radford (2004) provides the tree structure of phrase structure in the diagram below
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