Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T18:10:43.342Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The present perfect in Nigerian English1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2016

VALENTIN WERNER Open the ORCID record for VALENTIN WERNER [Opens in a new window]  and
ROBERT FUCHS
VALENTIN WERNER
Affiliation:
University of Bamberg, English and Historical Linguistics, An der Universität 9, 96045 Bamberg, [email protected]
ROBERT FUCHS
Affiliation:
University of Münster, English Department, Johannisstraße 12–20, 48143 Münster, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of present perfect (PP) use in Nigerian English (NigE), based on the Nigerian component of the International Corpus of English (ICE). First, we analyze variable contexts with the Simple Past (PT; determined by temporally specified contexts) as one of the main competitors of the PP, and thus assess the PP-friendliness of NigE in contrast to other varieties. We further provide an alternative measure of PP-friendliness and test register effects in terms of normalized and relative PP and PT frequencies. Our results indicate an overall reduced PP-friendliness of NigE and show internal variability in terms of PP frequencies in different variable contexts. As regards register effects, NigE does not show less variability of PP frequencies compared to British English (BrE). However, the distribution of the PP across registers in NigE does not follow the British pattern where certain registers are particularly PP-friendly. We discuss potential determining factors of the low frequency of the PP in NigE, and conclude that neither substrate influence nor general learning mechanisms on their own can comprehensively account for it. Instead, we suggest that historical influence from Irish and perhaps (at a later point) American English, in conjunction with general learning mechanisms, may be responsible.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 129 - 153
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

We would like to express our gratitude to Laurel Brinton and two anonymous reviewers, who have provided helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. We would also like to thank Taiwo Soneye for information on the completive aspect in Yoruba.

References

Adejare Abonego, Roseline. 2014. Tense and aspect in texts produced in the Nigerian ESL situation. Journal of ELT and Applied Linguistics 2 (1), 77–92.Google Scholar
Algeo, John. 2006. British or American English? A handbook of word and grammar patterns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Aliyu, Mohammed. 1991. The tense system of Hausa. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 27, 65–98.Google Scholar
Anthony, Laurence. 2011. AntConc. Tokyo: Waseda University.Google Scholar
Awonusi, Victor O. 1986. Regional accents and internal variability in Nigerian English: A historical analysis. English Studies 67 (6), 555–60.Google Scholar
Awonusi, Victor O. 1994. The Americanization of Nigerian English. World Englishes 13 (1), 75–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Awoyale, Yiwola. 1991. The tense system of Yoruba. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 27, 193–222.Google Scholar
Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen. 1999. From morpheme studies to temporal semantics: Tense-aspect research in SLA. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 21 (3), 341–82.Google Scholar
Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen. 2014. Documenting interlanguage development. In Han, ZhaoHong & Tarone, Elaine (eds.), Interlanguage: Forty years later, 127–46. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Collins, Peter (ed.). 2015. Grammatical change in English world-wide. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, Mark & Fuchs, Robert. 2015. Expanding horizons in the study of World Englishes with the 1.9 billion word Global Web-based English corpus (GloWbE). English World-Wide 36 (1), 1–28.Google Scholar
Davydova, Julia. 2011. The present perfect in non-native Englishes: A corpus-based study. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Davydova, Julia. 2013. Detecting historical continuity in a linguistically diverse area: The present perfect in modern Singapore English. In Duarte, Joana & Gogolin, Ingrid (eds.), Linguistic super-diversity in urban areas: Research approaches, 193–225. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). 2013. The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://wals.info (10 October 2014).Google Scholar
Elsness, Johan. 1997. The perfect and the preterite in contemporary and earlier English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Elugbe, Ben Ohiọmamhẹ & Omamor, Augusta Phil. 2007. Nigerian Pidgin: Background and prospects. Ibadan: Heinemann Educational.Google Scholar
Emenanjo, E. Nolue. 1991. The tense system of Igbo. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 27, 129–44.Google Scholar
Evert, Stefan. 2005. The statistics of word cooccurrences: Word pairs and collocations. PhD dissertation, University of Stuttgart. http://elib.uni-stuttgart.de/opus/volltexte/2005/2371/ (5 September 2014).Google Scholar
Faraclas, Nicolas G. 1996. Nigerian Pidgin. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Filppula, Markku. 1999. The grammar of Irish English: Language in Hibernian style. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Robert. 2016. The frequency of the present perfect in varieties of English around the world. In Werner, Seoane & Suárez-Gómez (eds.), 223–58.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Robert & Gut, Ulrike. 2015. An apparent time study of the progressive in Nigerian English. In Collins (ed.), 373–87.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Robert, Gut, Ulrike & Soneye, Taiwo. 2013. ‘We just don't even know’: The usage of the pragmatic focus particles even and still in Nigerian English. English World-Wide 34 (2), 123–45.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Robert, Götz, Sandra & Werner, Valentin. 2016. The present perfect in learner Englishes: A corpus-based case study on L1 German intermediate and advanced speech and writing. In Werner, Seoane & Suárez-Gómez (eds.), 297–336.Google Scholar
Garside, Roger & Smith, Nicholas. 1997. A hybrid grammatical tagger: CLAWS4. In Garside, Roger, Leech, Geoffrey & McEnery, Tony (eds.), Corpus annotation: Linguistic information from computer text corpora, 102–21. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Gut, Ulrike. 2004. Nigerian English: Phonology. In Kortmann, Bernd & Schneider, Edgar (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English, 813–30. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Gut, Ulrike. 2012. Towards a codification of Nigerian English: The ICE Nigeria project. Journal of the Nigeria English Studies Association 15 (1), 1–12.Google Scholar
Gut, Ulrike. 2014. ICE Nigeria corpus manual. Münster: University of Münster.Google Scholar
Gut, Ulrike & Fuchs, Robert. 2013. Progressive aspect in Nigerian English. Journal of English Linguistics 41 (3), 243–67.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas & Siebers, Lucia (eds.). 2009. World Englishes – problems, properties and prospects. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey K.. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne. 2009. Global English – global corpora: Report on a panel discussion at the 28th ICAME conference. In Renouf, Antoinette & Kehoe, Andrew (eds.), Corpus linguistics: Refinements and reassessments, 451–62. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne & Smith, Nicholas. 2009. The present perfect in British and American English: Has there been a change, recently? ICAME Journal 33, 45–63.Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne & Gut, Ulrike (eds.). 2012. Mapping unity and diversity world-wide: Corpus-based studies of New Englishes. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Igboanusi, Herbert. 2003. Knowledge, use and attitudes towards Americanisms in Nigerian English. World Englishes 22 (4), 599–604.Google Scholar
Igboanusi, Herbert & Peter, Lothar. 2005. Languages in competition: The struggle for supremacy among Nigeria's major languages, English and Pidgin. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Jowitt, David. 1991. Nigerian English usage. Lagos: Bencod Press.Google Scholar
Kenny, Kevin. 2004. The Irish in the Empire. In Kenny, Kevin (ed.), Ireland and the British Empire, 90–122. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kirk, John M. 2015. The progressive in Irish English: Looking both ways? In Collins (ed.), 87–118.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd & Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2009. World Englishes between simplification and complexification. In Hoffmann & Siebers (eds.), 265–85.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd & Lunkenheimer, Kerstin (eds.). 2013. The electronic world atlas of varieties of English. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://ewave-atlas.org (30 October 2014).Google Scholar
Kperogi, Farooq A. 2015. Glocal English: The changing face and forms of Nigerian English in a global world. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lunkenheimer, Kerstin. 2012. Tense and aspect. In Hickey, Raymond (ed.), Areal features of the anglophone world, 329–53. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mair, Christian. 2013. The World System of Englishes: Accounting for the transnational importance of mobile and mediated vernaculars. English World-Wide 34 (3), 253–78.Google Scholar
Markus, Manfred. 1977. Tempus und Aspekt: Zur Funktion von Präsens, Präteritum und Perfekt im Englischen und Deutschen. Munich: Fink.Google Scholar
McCoard, Robert W. 1978. The English perfect: Tense-choice and pragmatic inferences. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Miller, Jim. 2004. Perfect and resultative constructions in spoken and non-standard English. In Fischer, Olga, Norde, Muriel & Perridon, Harry (eds.), Up and down the cline: The nature of grammaticalization, 229–46. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko. S. 1996. The founder principle in creole genesis. Diachronica 13 (1), 83–134.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey N. & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Rogatcheva, Svetlomira. 2014. Aspect in learner writing: A corpus-based comparison of advanced Bulgarian and German learners’ written English. PhD dissertation, University of Giessen. http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2015/11393/pdf/RogatchevaSvetla_2014_12_05.pdf (8 November 2015).Google Scholar
Roy, Joseph. 2014. The perfect approach to adverbs: Applying variation theory to competing models. PhD dissertation, University of Ottawa. www.ruor.uottawa.ca/bitstream/10393/30341/3/Roy_Joseph_2014_thesis.pdf (3 November 2014).Google Scholar
Schlüter, Norbert. 2002. Present Perfect: Eine korpuslinguistische Analyse des englischen Perfekts mit Vermittlungsvorschlägen für den Sprachunterricht. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Schneider, Gerold & Hundt, Marianne. 2012. ‘Off with their heads’: Profiling TAM in ICE corpora. In Hundt & Gut (eds.), 1–34.Google Scholar
Scott, Mike. 2011. WordSmith Tools. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.Google Scholar
Seoane, Elena & Suárez-Gómez, Cristina. 2013. The expression of the perfect in South-East Asian Englishes. English World-Wide 34 (1), 1–25.Google Scholar
Shirai, Yasuhiro. 2009. Temporality in first and second language acquisition. In Klein, Wolfgang & Li, Ping (eds.), The expression of time, 167–93. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Sönning, Lukas. Forthcoming. The dot plot: A fine tool for data visualization. In Christ, Hanna, Klenovšak, Daniel, Sönning, Lukas & Werner, Valentin (eds.), A blend of MaLT: Selected contributions from the Methods and Linguistic Theories Symposium 2015. Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 2004. New-dialect formation: The inevitability of colonial Englishes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Van Hattum, Marije. 2014. The impact of migration on the tense and aspect system of nineteenth-century Irish English correspondents. Presented at ICAME 35: Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture, University of Nottingham.Google Scholar
Van Rooy, Bertus. 2009. The shared core of the perfect across Englishes: A corpus-based analysis. In Hoffmann & Siebers (eds.), 309–30.Google Scholar
Van Rooy, Bertus. 2011. A principled distinction between error and conventionalized innovation in African Englishes. In Mukherjee, Joybrato & Hundt, Marianne (eds.), Exploring second-language varieties of English and learner Englishes: Bridging a paradigm gap, 189–207. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Van Rooy, Bertus. 2016. Present perfect and past tense in Black South African English. In Werner, Seoane & Suárez-Gómez (eds.), 149–68.Google Scholar
Vanneck, Gerard. 1958. The colloquial preterit in modern American English. Word 14, 237–42.Google Scholar
Werner, Valentin. 2013. Temporal adverbials and the present perfect/past tense alternation. English World-Wide 34 (2), 202–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Werner, Valentin. 2014. The present perfect in World Englishes: Charting unity and diversity. Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press.Google Scholar
Werner, Valentin. 2016. Overlap and divergence – aspects of the present perfect in World Englishes. In Seoane, Elena & Suárez-Gómez, Cristina (eds.), World Englishes: New theoretical and methodological considerations, 113–42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Werner, Valentin. Forthcoming. The Present Perfect as a core feature of World Englishes. In Mauranen, Anna, Klemola, Juhani, Vetchinnikova, Svetlana & Filppula, Markku (eds.), Changing English: Global and local perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Werner, Valentin, Seoane, Elena & Suárez-Gómez, Cristina (eds.). 2016. Re-assessing the present perfect. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wunder, Eva-Maria, Voormann, Holger & Gut, Ulrike. 2010. The ICE Nigeria corpus project: Creating an open, rich and accurate corpus. ICAME Journal 34, 78–88.Google Scholar
Yao, Xinyue. 2014. The present perfect in English: Meaning, interpretation and use. PhD dissertation, University of New South Wales. http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/fapi/datastream/unsworks:12163/SOURCE02 (04 December 2014).Google Scholar
Yao, Xinyue & Collins, Peter. 2012. The present perfect in World Englishes. World Englishes 31 (3), 386–403.Google Scholar
Zhang, Yanyin & Widyastuti, Ima. 2010. Acquisition of L2 English morphology: A family case study. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 33 (3), 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar