Chapter One

Introduction

1.0 Preamble

Language is a complex and a dynamic human possession. Its role as a veritable instrument of social cohesion has been recognized through ages and in all cultures. The possession of this concrete medium of communication among human beings distinguishes man from other animals. Many languages exist in the world. These languages are either spoken or written or both. Language is a treasure, a mark of identity, a human trait manifesting strengths and weaknesses of thought. It is therefore a social phenomenon capable of bringing people from different locale together. This unifying force is exemplified by the English Language in Nigeria.
It was introduced in Nigeria by the early Europeans for business transactions and subsequent colonization. Through the agency of the church, some Nigerians learned the language, which qualified them for positions as clerks, interpreters and messengers to the whites. They constituted what one may call the first elite class whose existence spurred other people to compete for learning and speaking the English Language.

The acceptance of the English Language in Nigeria as a medium of instruction makes it a second language and its importance in the Nigerian situation is overwhelming, and according to Baldeh, (1) “it is the most important legacy of the British colonial masters in Nigeria”, as our political, social, economic and cultural engagements are suffused with English.

1.1 Background to the Study

English is a second language in Nigeria. A second language is a language which is not indigenous to a country but is used in official settings. Scholars aver that learning English or any other language as a second or foreign language implies several difficulties. Not only would the L2 learner master the sounds of the target language (the phonemes) and understand the arrangement of words to make meaningful utterances (syntax), he should also strive to master the vocabulary of the target language and its orthography (the way words are written). Although some languages most nearly are written in the same way as they are pronounced, English has minimal written and spoken relationship.
Learners of English in Nigeria encounter two major problems: the problem of language interference where L1 of the learner interferes with his L2 and the developmental problem arising from the structure of the particular language they being

learned. Interference problems occur because no two languages posses the same rules. The situation always results in transferring the rules of the first language to that of the learner’s second language, thus creating misnomer and confusion in usage. Throwing light on this Guttegno asserts:
The experience we all have in using our language for the possession of our thoughts, feelings, emotions and perceptions is that words come by themselves. As soon as we leave our own language and concentrate on acquiring a new one, however, we find that we are engaged in struggles that our memory becomes so important (1).

However, students learning a second language face not only the problem of language interference, but also the problems emanating solely from their target language. These intra-lingual problems have been widely list-of-project-and-materials/">researched and listed. According to Richards, “a number of errors occur in English as a result of such problems from the following expressions: Did he cried? He coming from Israel. Make him to do it. I can to speak French”. He further explains:

Errors of this nature are frequent regardless of the learner’s language background. They may be called intra-lingual and developmental errors and reflect the learners competence at a particular stage. Their origin is found within the structure of the English itself (173).
From the above explanation, one can see that the problems facing second language learners are two folds: one

emanating from interference of their L1 with L2, and another from the target language itself.
The complex nature of the English language makes its second language learners face the above problems in mastering its grammar and vocabulary. Grammar implies patterns, patterns of word endings, function words and word/morpheme order. Kies (2) asserts: “patterns are crucial in helping us discover the constituents of language, recognizing patterns in distribution and meaning becomes the process through which human beings discover the grammatical structures of their languages”. The English language is sentence structured or patterned and can be easily analyzed on the basis of sentence constituents known as parts of speech or word classes.
In the English word class, the verb occupies a significant position, and most of the errors that occur in the English grammar are caused by its verbs, particularly the irregular verbs. Eyisi defines a verb as:
A word or a group of words that is used to tell what someone or something is, does or experiences. It is a compulsory element of a sentence expressing an action done by the subject (the nominal) or a state experienced by the subject or what is becoming of the subject (49).

Examples: talk, look, close, be, have, do, come, see.

She goes further to classify the English verbs thus:

It can be noticed from the diagram above that the lexical verb is of two types: the regular lexical verbs and the irregular lexical verbs. Verbs are classified as regular if they form their past tense and past participle tense by adding “-ed” inflection; otherwise it becomes irregular using different other ways to form their “ed” participle.
Huddleston (90) defines a verb as “part of speech that predicates, assists in predication, asks a question or expresses a command.” He exemplifies these as:
The wind blows. (Predicate)

He is blind. (predication) Did he do it?(Questioning) Hurry! (Command)
The verb is therefore, regarded as the most important part of speech since no sentence can be deemed acceptable without it. Correct verb usage makes grammaticality and acceptability possible. Surprisingly too, this most important part of speech constitutes the greatest source of error in the English grammar. The aspect of the English verb that constitutes the greatest source of error in the English grammar is the IRREGULAR VERB.
English verbs have different forms, some of which according to Selby (40) are “the principal parts of a verb”. The first principal part is called the simple present; the second is the simple past and the third is the past participle which must be preceded by an auxiliary such as have, HAVE + the past participle form. The English irregular verbs form their past tense and the past participle tense in several ways other than the usual “ed” inflection of the regular verbs. This is the reason for their posing problems to ESL learners. Some of them exhibit changes in the middle vowel for one or both of the past and past participle forms (sing, sang, sung; ring, rang, rung), and some have an “en” inflection for the “ed” participle (speak, spoke, spoken; break, broke, broken; take, took, taken). Some

of the irregular verbs remain the same as the base forms: cast, cast, cast; put, put, put; broadcast, broadcast, broadcast; forecast, forecast, forecast). The verb “be” is highly irregular with eight forms: base “be”, present “am”, first person singular “is”, (the “s” form for third person singular),”are” (second person singular and all plurals), past “was” (first and third person singular), present participle or ‘ing’ form “being” and the “ed” participle “been”.
The “s” form of have, do, say (has, does, says) respectively are all irregular in their tense formation. The auxiliaries have a defective paradigm since they only have the base forms and irregularly constructed past forms (can, could, may, might). Must is further exceptional in having only the
base form.

There are other types of these irregular verbs that are very much idiosyncratic in their behaviour. They pose almost the greatest problems when they occur in grammatical work. This is because any mistake in usage these verbs result in a change in their meanings. These forms when wrongly used alter the entire meaning of the verb by giving it a different meaning altogether. The verb like “hang” with its past form “hung”, if wrongly formed as a regular verb, will convey a different meaning altogether. It will then mean, “to execute”