Plural marking in Yorùbá and English and its pedagogical implications

It is a known fact that many Nigerians face a lot of difficulties in the use of English in their day to day activities. One major reason for this is the structural differences between English and Nigerian languages. In this paper, one of such structural differences namely, an aspect of number marking in English and Yorùbá is addressed. This phenomenon is accounted for empirically and theoretically. Empirically, the author presents ample data that show the various morphemes which are involved in marking plural in English and Yorùbá pointing out areas of similarities and differences. Theoretically, it is shown that while English obligatorily marks nouns and other elements within a nominal expression using a plural matching mechanism, Yorùba does so optionally using a feature percolation mechanism. It further points out the pedagogical implications of the observed differences from the point of view of native speakers of Yorùbá (L1) (movie actors/actresses, students as well as their teachers among others) who learn/use English as a second language (L2).