A Corpus-based Study of Patterns of Triphthong Realisation in Educated Nigerian English
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Date
2024
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Journal of English Scholars’ Association of Nigeria
Abstract
The existence of triphthongs in native and non-native English varieties is a controversial topic.
Therefore, this paper undertakes a corpus-based study of the patterns of triphthong realisation
in educated Nigerian English (NigE) to identify the phonological processes employed in their
realisation. Natural phonology has been adopted as a theoretical framework based on its
practical application against formal or rule-governed phonological theories. The spoken part of
the International Corpus of English (ICE), Nigeria of over 600,000 words provided data for the
study. Using AntConc corpus analysis toolkit (version 3.4.4.0), 26 lexical items that contain
English triphthong sounds were searched for in the ICE-Nig corpus. Only 20 of the items that
occurred ten times and more in the corpus were eventually selected for analysis. These were
analysed quantitatively by counting the tokens of occurrence and the number of speakers and
converting them to percentages. The findings revealed that triphthongs are variedly realised in
NigE, through natural phonological processes of syllabification, diphthongisation and
monophthongisation as a ‘natural’ solution to the general difficulty associated with their
pronunciation. This marks NigE as different from RP and validates its peculiarity and
uniqueness. The study re-echoes the ongoing clamour for the codification and standardisation
of NigE so that it can also occupy its rightful place as a variety of World Englishes.