A Morpho-Syntactic Analysis of Tense-Aspectual Categories in English and Nàijá

This study investigates the following tense-aspectual categories in English and the English-lexifier Nigerian creole, Nàijá: absolute tenses (present, past, future) and the perfective, pro-gressive, and durational aspects. The adopted theoretical framework is the minimalist program (MP) of generative syntax. The primary data for the analysis are the relevant Nàijá tense-aspectual structures and their English translation equivalent. Two research questions guided the analysis: (i) What are the points of syntactic convergence and/or divergence between Nàijá and English tense-aspectual structures? (ii) What are the points of morphological convergence and/or divergence in Nàijá and English tense-aspectual structures? The following are the key findings. In English present tense, tense/T is a null (Ø) category; in contrast, Nàijá present tense obligatorily requires the auxiliary ‘dè’ at the tense/T node. The other two tenses (past and future) have the same syntactic structure in both languages. With reference to the progres-sive, perfective, and perfect-progressive aspectual categories, the syntactic structures are the same in English and Nàijá. With the sole exception of the syntactic structure of present tense (as noted above), the observed differences between English and Nàijá are morphological: Whereas English auxiliaries and verbs vary morphologically in response to the tense, number, and person features of the syntactic structure in which they occur, Nàijá auxiliaries and verbs are morphologically invariant.