Syntactic Reconciliation of Conditional Tenses in English and Anaang at Distributional Equivalence

This paper attempts a look at Conditional Tenses and the types existing in English and Anaanglanguages. It tries a reconciliation of the tenses and types at a distributional equivalence witha proof of adequate similarities and dissimilarities (if any) through the use of ContrastiveAnalysis Hypothesis instrument as a theoretical framework in the syntactic rank scale. Toachieve this purpose, thirty (30) sentences were constructed and administered on eighty (80)respondents who were selected by simple stratified random sampling technique at (10) eachfrom the eight (8) local government areas in Akwa Ibom State whose native language isAnaang. The respondents were required to change a given tense type to the other two typesin each case such that (2,400) sentences were finally generated from the three types ofconditional tenses. From the data collected, it was revealed that the three types of conditionaltenses which exist in English are also available in Anaang and operate at an absolute distributionalequivalence. Conclusions were drawn that an Anaang learner/user of English would not encounterany problem in his use of English conditional tenses and vice versa in a second languagesituation. It was recommended among others, that this study be replicated using other languagefamilies in other sections of the country while areas of difficulties should be made to serve as abasis for the selection of Instructional materials by curriculum planners for remedial programmes.