Language attrition of morphosyntax is a growing interest and an area of concern as Anaañ children who due to contact with English tend to simplify and mix tenses through code-switching, code-mixing, and other processes. The participants for the study constituted St. Francis Xavier Primary School pupils and the students of State College, Ikot Ekpene Local Government Area, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. An expo-facto design was used and purposive sampling was used to select hundred participants drawn from the 2 schools—50 from Primary school and 50 from secondary school, (50 boys, 50 girls). The participants were grouped into a Study Group (SG) and a Control Group (CG). Those in CG were brought in for comparison. They were only twenty in number with the same age bracket as those in the SG. They are children who speak more of Anaañ with no fluency in English. At the same time, those in SG are children who speak English and Anaañ (bilinguals). A personality Background Questionnaire (PBQ), a vocabulary test of picture naming tasks (PNT), and a list of phrases and short sentences were used to collect data. Theories of language contact and change and Psycholinguistic Questions of Accessibility are implored in the analysis. The study reveals the unstable areas of L1 attrition of morphosyntax in Anaañ. It shows that morphosyntactic attrition occurs due to the preference for speaking non-Anaañ language at home and with peers. Also due to negative attitude and lack of motivation towards using the Anaañ Language.

Authors:
Victoria Etim, University of Calabar, Nigeria
Leonard Ojorgu, University of Calabar, Nigeria

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Posted by James Alexander Gordon

Last updated: 2023-02-23 23:45:00

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