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Volume 26, Issue 3
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Abstract

Abstract

This paper examines five bilingual pragmatic markers: , , , , and , loaned from indigenous Nigerian languages into Nigerian English, with a view to investigating their sources, meanings, frequencies, spelling stability, positions, collocational patterns and discourse-pragmatic functions. The data for the study were obtained from the International Corpus of English-Nigeria and the Nigerian component of the Global Web-based English corpus. These were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, using the theory of pragmatic borrowing. The results show that , , and are borrowed from Yoruba, is loaned from Arabic through Hausa and Yoruba while is borrowed from Hausa. serves as an attention marker, and function as emphasis markers, serves as an emphatic manner of speaking marker while functions as an attention marker and agreement-seeking marker. The study highlights the influence of indigenous Nigerian languages on the discourse-pragmatic features of Nigerian English.

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2021-07-07
2024-10-07

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International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 26, 370 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.20026.unu
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): bilingual pragmatic markers; Nigerian English; postcolonial corpus pragmatics; pragmatic borrowing

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