Influence of Affixation on the International Intelligibility of Aspects of SNE Lexicosemantics

Abstract

Significant investigative resources have been directed at investigating the linguistic peculiarities of standard Nigerian English at the lexicosemantic level. However, research imperatives are generally skewed in favour of either describing the processes, the linguistic/sociocultural forces that underpin them, or their implication for English language pedagogy Commensurate attention has not been given to the effect of such lexicosemantic processes on the intelligibility of Nigerian English internationally. This paper examines the influence that specific morphological processes in standard Nigerian English have on the international intelligibility of its lexico-semantics. The study population consists of one hundred and fifty educated Kenyanusers of Standard English. The test items in the research instrument consist of lexical items that have been semantically extended in SNE other SNE coinages. The analysis of the data indicates that SNE words derived using affixation are significantly more intelligible to the study population. The higher intelligibility of this set of SNE words is ascribable to the interpretive/semantic force of affixes attached to ab initio SBE root words.