Some Yoruba Developmental Linguistic Errors and their Structural Imports
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Date
2018
Authors
Ilọri, J.F.
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Abstract
Child language errors are not errors in the real sense of the term but
manifestations of developmental stages of language acquisition of the child.
Given the systematic and rule-governed nature of such errors in a manner
comparable to those usually found in the performances of adult foreign/second
language learners/users, such errors not only present interesting feedbacks on the
linguistic development of the child (i.e. showing what the child has acquired
successfully and what he is yet to acquire given his age and aptitude) but also
provide useful insights on the linguistic structure of the language concerned and
how such is acquired. This paper examines some linguistic developmental errors
in the speech forms of a native-Yoruba child when he was between the ages of 4
and 6. As evident in the data, strings of Yoruba-English code-mixing were very
minimal as the child’s exposure to English prior to and during the study period
was relatively minimal. However, the fact that the child had been exposed to
more than two dialects of Yoruba namely Ò ̣yó ̣-Ibadan Yoruba, Standard Yoruba,
and Ò ̣kà/Ìkàré ̣-Àkókó Yoruba is evident in the structural forms and types of
errors manifested. Findings show a conglomeration of syntactic, semantic, and
phonological errors some of which are actually traceable to influences from
English and those other dialects of Yoruba to which the child had been exposed.
The study concludes that the noted error types manifested (namely substitution,
omission, and contradiction) are purely developmental in nature, which implies
that the subject’s brain as at the period of study was yet to develop the capability
to handle the complexity of the constructions involved. The study has far
reaching theoretical and practical implications and application for Yoruba as
second/foreign language programmes in terms of material development and
management of learner errors.
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Citation
Ilori, J. F. 2018. ‘Some Yoruba Developmental Linguistic Errors and their Structural Imports’ Ifè̩ Journal of Languages and Literatures, Volume 4 Number 1 pages 51-64. Department of Linguistics and African Languages, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ifẹ.