The Morphophonemics of Tense and Aspects in Wana Dialect of Eggon Language in Contrast With English Language

This study examines the differences and similarities in the morphophonemic of tense and aspects in Wana Dialect of Eggon language in contrast with English language. The study adopts the contrastive analysis theory and Reichenbach theory of tense to describe the tense and aspects of the two language of study. Data is collected from community meetings attended by the researcher as a passive observer. Structured sentences of the native speakers of Wana Dialect of Eggon language from villages of Kagbu-Wana, Tkpa and Aruwa-wayo are translated to English language and analyzed through the use of qualitative data analysis method. The analysis reveals that there is a marked difference in the morphological and phonemic processes of the two languages. Although the two Languages have two basic tenses, there are still differences between the two. English has the present and the past tense, Eggon has the future and the non-future tense. In English Language, tense is typically a morphological category of the verb. Verbs in English undergo the process of inflection for both regular and irregular verbs to form the past and present tense. The verbs are inflected for person, number and tense through the use of suffixation. Thus, it is possible to have morphological changes on the verb to form the present and the past tense in English but not future tense because there is no morphological change to indicate the future. Eggon Language like English has two basic tense distinction; the future and the non-future but tense in Eggon Language is not morphologically marked. Tense is marked by tone changes on the verb agreement prefix. The future is marked by a ‘H’ (high) tone and non-future is marked by ‘M’ (mid) tone on the agreement prefix which always reflects on the verbs. The prefixes are the Eggon vowel phonemes made up of a seven-vowel system. Understanding or lack of understanding these differences in the morphological process of the two languages can serve to enhance or impede the learning of English as L2.