Injudicious use of the Anaphoric ‘it’ by English Language Speakers in Ghana: Are Ghanaian languages to blame?

Abstract

This paper examines the wrong application of the anaphoric pronoun 'it' in English language discourses in Ghana. The paper is grounded in a content analysis research design. The data for the paper were solicited from extracts from radio programmes and writings and speeches of unsuspecting Ghanaians. From the data collected and analyzed, we observed that the third-person singular non-human pronoun, it, is often used to refer anaphorically to a plural antecedent. This creates a disagreement between the pronoun and its referent. This phenomenon often happens unconsciously and speakers do not usually realize any grammatical problem with this situation. The study revealed that apart from the structural problem of the wrong use of the anaphoric it creates the lack of agreement between the anaphoric it and its referent may be a structural transfer from some Ghanaian first languages. The paper, therefore, recommends that teachers of the English language should explain to their students that English requires an agreement between a pronoun and its referent. A lack of this agreement constitutes a grammatical problem.