Determiners and Adjectives in English and Nigerian Pidgin - A Contrastive Inquiry

Abstract

This paper undertakes a contrastive analysis of determiners and adjectives in English and Nigerian Pidgin. It observes that there are sub-divisions of determiners; which are pre-determiners, determiners and post-determiners and it discusses the form class of determiners in English and Nigerian Pidgin. This paper notes that Nigerian Pidgin has fewer determiners than English. The sub-classes of adjectives in the two languages are analyzed. It evaluates the difference between English and Nigerian Pidgin adjectives. The intensifiers that precede adjectives and the comparative and superlative degrees of comparison in the two languages are discussed. Finally, the paper notes that the observed differences between determiners and adjectives in the two languages creates learning problems of split and collapsing for the Nigerian Pidgin speaker learning English determiners and adjectives.