SOURCE:

Faculty: Arts
Department: Modern European Languages

CONTRIBUTORS:

Emeh, C.K;
Ezeani, E.O;

ABSTRACT:

Negation is a linguistic aspect with which the grammatical structure of a language is expressed in the negative. The goal of this contrastive study is to compare negation in the two languages. And also to find key difficulties, minimizing the problems encountered by the igbophones learning French as a foreign language while facilitating the grasp of French negation. We adopted the descriptive method to explain negation in both languages, using contrastive theory by Lado to compare negation in the two languages. We also used pedagogic approach for error analysis by Corder, and identification of errors committed by igbophone learners of French negation. These errors are caused by intralingual interference deriving from the learners ignorance of the transformational rules of French negative sentences. We propose that igbophones learning French negation take into account the complex nature, functions and uses of negation in the French language.