Pluralisation in Ígálá and English

Languages of the world have certain similar linguistic features in terms of a finite set of fundamental principles which are universal to all languages on one hand, and a finite set of parameters which determine syntactic variability amongst them. In order to substantiate evidence of linguistic universals, there is need for comparative analysis of languages. The thrust of the paper is to expound the diversities and similarities in Ígálá and English linguistic systems in the area of patterns of pluralisation. The paper is hinged on Inferential-realizational theory. The paper observed that the noun class in Ígálá is marked for number through three inflectional markers [ám(á), ìb(ó) and áb(ó)] while the noun class in English is inflected for number by the following exponents: [-s, -es, -ies, -en, -ren, -ves] not losing sight of zero concept. Germane to this work is the fact that Ígálá and English exhibit extended exponence- a linguistic situation where a particular morphosyntactic property could be expressed by more than one morphological marking in the same word depending on the lexeme’s root. Plural markers in Ígálá are prefixes while plural markers in English are suffixes. In conclusion, English and Ígálá are uniform in one specific sense of the capacity to inflect words for grammatical purposes, but have different structures in the process of inflection or associating an inflected word with a specific set of morphosyntactic properties.