Structural Variation and the Noun Phrase in Nigerian English

This book examines syntactic questions of structure and complexity in Nigerian English, incorporating analysis of complexity, structural variation, interference, usage-driven patterns, and the role of complex cognitive variables in speakers’ choices. The author explores how these syntactic properties interface with other broader aspects of semantics (meaning), pragmatics (interpretation), and the complex cognitive processes and variables that influence speakers’ choices and how meaning and interpretation are worked out. The book also compares and contrasts these findings with examples of how these processes and properties compare with other varieties, such as in standard British, Ghanaian, Indian, Singaporean English. This book is the first book-length study dedicated to the uses, study, teaching, speech communities, and scholarship of Nigerian English, and it will be of interest to a broad audience of specialists in World Englishes, Sociolinguistics, and African Languages and Cultures.

Mayowa Akinlotan is a visiting research fellow at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Regensburg, Germany where he was a Humboldt research fellow. He has published extensively in internationally recognised journals on syntactic structures, structural patterning, corpus linguistics, and variation of World Englishes, including Nigerian English, American English, British English, Indian English, and African Englishes. He is the author of the edited book Englishes in Africa, and forthcoming books Syntactic Interfaces in Yoruba Language and A Sociolinguistics of Englishes Across Africa.