Abstract:
Linguists generally have agreed that there exists an inevitable inter-relationship between different levels of linguistic analysis among which are: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Various linguistic labels are used in the description of such a link. In particular, there exists a bridge between the morphology and phonology-morpho-phonemics of English and Idoma languages. English and Idoma languages are of two different linguistic backgrounds. Idoma language falls among the category of minority languages in Nigeria that has not received any serious scholarly attention in the area of morpho-phonemics. Hence, it becomes necessary to examine a contrastive analysis of the morpho-phonemic features of English and Idoma languages. The aim of the study is to provide a contrastive analysis of the morpho-phonemic features of English and Idoma. The researcher however gathered the data for this study through oral interview among competent Idoma native speakers; the researcher equally used existing literature in English language as well as the researcher’s personal knowledge as a competent native speaker of Idoma language respectively. The study is anchored on Robert Lado’s Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis and Chomsky and Halle theory of Generative Phonology. However, the findings of the study review that: Idoma language unlike the English language (with forty-four) has thirty-two sounds/phonemes of which seven are vowels whereas twenty-five are consonant sounds; monosyllabic verbs in Idoma Language use infinitive prefix ‘o’ before the verb unlike the English language; Idoma nouns begin with vowel sounds only; inflectional endings (plural markers) and past tense marker in English and Idoma languages are quite different from each other just like the English and Idoma syllabic structures; there is vowel hiatus resolution (omission/elision/deletion) in both Idoma and English languages. English and Idoma languages are different and similar to some extent in their word formations. From the findings of this study, the researcher cannot claim to have explored each and every aspect in the area of morpho-phonemics of English and Idoma languages, therefore recommends that other researches particularly on Morpho-syntactic, morpho-semantics and many others be carried out to contrast English and Idoma languages.
