A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MOVEMENT RULES IN ENGLISH AND IGBO SYNTAX

In spite of the exciting promise of the Government and Binding (GB) theory (i.e Universal Grammar - UG) in its attempt to reduce transformational rules just to the -Move Alpha, very little has been done to test its application to other languages apart from those spoken in Europe. Very little has also been done to compare aspects of the Move Alpha construct across European and African Languages. The result is that many of the propositions purporting to be universal are constant sources of controversy.

This study is an attempt to compare the two variants of the Move Alpha - NP and WH Movements in English and Igbo within the Principles and Parameters framework of the GB theory. Two methodological biases are presupposed: it is only by investigating a system thoroughly that definite understanding of it is reached; evidence from comparative analyses of a few languages can actually provide substantial.

The study which is predominantly library-based upholds all the eight hypotheses regarding Movement processes thus the Move Alpha, with all its allied principles, is observed to apply to the two languages with t e priviso that movement may be at the level of syntax or within the Logical form.
The shortfall in the range of structures deriving from syntactic Movement and the violation of the absolute nulltrace convention in Igbo, together with the peculiarities of the language in respect of syntactic constraints, reinforce the parametric view of the principles of UG.