A Contrastive Analysis of English and Pero Mophemes: Implication for Pero Speakers of English as Second Language (ESL) .

Abstract

This paper analyses and contrasts the processes of the morphemes of English
and Pero and the implication to Pero speakers of English. Previous studies
have observed that second language learners of English to face certain
challenges in every aspect of language when they use English whether
verbally or in writing. This paper is a contrastive analysis of the various rules
and processes of formation of words in the two languages via morphemes
which were identified and classified for this purpose. The procedure utilized
is for identifying morphological processes in languages.
The book of the Bible in Pero is employed to
provide the Pero data to be contrasted with English. In trying to identify the
similarities and differences, the morphemes of both languages were compared
in order to postulate the degree of possible interference the learner would
have in learning English as a second language. The matching method of
contrastive analysis was applied and it was found that all word-formation
processes are generally rule-governed; but in spite of that the rules are
sometimes very complicated and some processes overlap and interpenetrate
each other. It was also found that general similarities appear in both
languages in affixation where prefixes and suffixes are used in formation of
words via morphemes in both languages. The area of divergence was
identified such as the inflectional process in English but in Pero it is derivation
in the form of prefixation, compounding and reduplication. Likewise, some
formation processes in Pero are not found in English such as the positioning
of the morpheme that accounts for the doer of an action which is placed before
the stem in Pero but in English it is attached at the end of the stem: anfor fighter. Therefore, the Pero speakers of English are bound to encounter
certain forms of interference as they speak English.