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A Study of the Use of the Weak Forms of English Grammatical Words by Educated Yoruba (Nigeria) English Speakers
Abstract
More often than not, when grammatical words such as determiners,
pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs and prepositions occur in Standard English sentences, they are produced in their weak forms. The concern of this study is whether educated Yoruba English speakers appropriately use the weak forms of English grammatical words in their sentences or not. One hundred Educated Yoruba English (EYE) speakers were made to read some English sentences into tapes and a perceptual analysis of the data was done. It was discovered that in most instances, educated Yoruba English speakers use strong sounds in the position of the expected weak forms and more often than not, strong vowels from the mother tongue were substituted for the weak sound / / which is the commonest vowel found in the weak forms of English grammatical words. Elision, which often occurs to English grammatical words, was also found not to manifest remarkably in this ‘geo-tribal’ variety of Nigerian English.
pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs and prepositions occur in Standard English sentences, they are produced in their weak forms. The concern of this study is whether educated Yoruba English speakers appropriately use the weak forms of English grammatical words in their sentences or not. One hundred Educated Yoruba English (EYE) speakers were made to read some English sentences into tapes and a perceptual analysis of the data was done. It was discovered that in most instances, educated Yoruba English speakers use strong sounds in the position of the expected weak forms and more often than not, strong vowels from the mother tongue were substituted for the weak sound / / which is the commonest vowel found in the weak forms of English grammatical words. Elision, which often occurs to English grammatical words, was also found not to manifest remarkably in this ‘geo-tribal’ variety of Nigerian English.
