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Word-stress free variation in Nigerian English

A corpus-based study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2021

Aderonke Akinola  and
Rotimi Oladipupo Open the ORCID record for Rotimi Oladipupo [Opens in a new window]
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Extract

English, in the course of its progressive evolution and global spread, has had contacts with different languages (Hogg & Denison, 2006) which have led to the emergence of native and non-native varieties spoken in different countries of the world. This, in part, has resulted in variable pronunciations of English lexical items, such as anti- pronounced as /ænti/ or /æntaɪ/ at the segmental level and adult as /'ædʌlt/ or /ə'dʌlt/ at the suprasegmental level of stress (Hogg & Denison, 2006). In addition to this, phonological free variation in English has been motivated by phonetic processes, phonological changes and sociolinguistic factors, among others (Shitara, 1993; Mompean, 2010).

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 165 - 177
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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