The Nominal Groups of English and Bura

A Comparative Exploration

Ahmed Umar & Baba Mai Bello University of Maiduguri, University of Bayreuth

This study compared the grammar of the nominal group in both English and Bura. The study aimed to compare the two languages in order to highlight the salient features of similarity and difference.

The comparative analysis was done in two ways: what items make up the NG of each language, and the order in which such items are arranged. Syntactically, English has the basic NG structure of MHQ (modifier + headword + qualifier); Bura has the basic NG structure of HQM (headword + qualifier + modifier). The same items (e.g. nouns, adjectives, etc) generally make up the NG of both English and Bura. The two languages also agree on the syntactic functions of the NG of subject, complement and the adjunct, the infinitival and present participial nominalisations, except on the clausal nominalisation, which is peculiar to English only.