ANALYSIS OF ATTRIBUTIVE ADJECTIVE ORDER ABERRATION IN SOME ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE DIPLOMA ONE STUDENT ESSAYS

Abstract

This research investigated students’ use of attributive adjective order with the aim of tracing the usual and the aberrated patterns deployed in their essays. To this end, the Parrot (2000) adjectives progression model was adopted to examine the data obtained from the Diploma One students of College of Education, Legal and General Studies Misau, Bauchi State. Out of the thirty-three (33) that responded to the essay questions, eleven (11) essays were selected using purposive sampling strategy to ensure only those with clusters of adjectives were selected for the study. The essays were then parsed manually and clusters of adjectives extracted and presented as excerpts for each essay. Thereafter, a reformulated version for each aberrated cluster of adjective was presented and a short comment followed essay by essay. Findings revealed that out of the twenty-seven (27) discovered clusters, twenty 20 (74%) are wrongly ordered and characterised the wrongful insertion of comma and ‘and’. The research identified over-generalisation of the first language adjective pattern and inadequate reading exposure as the sources to this grammatical irregularity.