A Variation Study of English and Ịzọn Adjectives

Variation between first languages and target languages have been highlighted as the bane to gaining proficiency in second languages. Thus, conflating Lado’s Contrastive Analysis and Chomsky’s Minimalist Program, this study examined the behaviours of adjectives in English and Ịzọn languages in order to highlight areas of dissimilarities that could hinder the learning of the English language by native speakers of the Izon language. The study employed the descriptive methodology. The data for the study were obtained from grammar texts and interpreted by native speakers of Izon. The study discovered overt variation in the grading of adjectives as well as the positions of the predicative adjectives. It therefore, recommends that teachers of Ịzọn/English bilinguals adopt teaching strategies that will assist learners overcome the challenges that ensue as a result of the variation and to depend on empirical researches like this study as instructional material. The study concluded that the morphological variations and the structural divergence in the adjectival representations in both languages make Ịzọn learners of the English language vulnerable to errors.