carol anyagwa

‘Sustainable development’ is often discussed with emphasis on social, infrastructural,economic and technological development, in many climes. The question of languagedevelopment is hardly ever mentioned and when it is, it is subsumed under culture. Allover the world, language suffices as that aspect of culture which marks a people outamong other groups of the same species. It often remains the inheritance of generationsafter generations and guarantees the perpetuity of the common goals and aspirations ofthe people. Given the central role which language plays in the individual and communallives of the people, it is often surprising that linguistic aspects of a people’s existence areoften treated with levity. In this study, adopting a purely library-based methodology andfocusing on the linguistic resources that abound in two indigenous Nigerian languages(Igbo and Yoruba), we investigated their state of development and their prospects. Thestudy sought to establish the place of Language Development within the larger picture ofSustainable Development focusing on the principles of graphisation, standardisation andmodernisation. It was argued here that any integrated development that affects otherareas of a people's life must of necessity also pay attention to the crucial issue ofLanguage Development since language is central to national development. The studyconcluded by emphasising the need for collaboration among stakeholders – the media,the academic and the everyday language user - to ensure that the results of our individualresearches are adequately publicised and implemented towards sustainable languagedevelopment.

This paper is a report on the pilot study investigating the geographical/ethnic dimension to the variable word stress patterns of Nigerian English. Fifty polysyllabic English words were read by fifty Nigerian undergraduates of the University of Lagos of varied socioeconomic , educational and ethnolinguistic backgrounds. Each half of this sample was made up of L1 speakers of Igbo and L1 speakers of Yoruba respectively, whose productions were analysed statistically and metrically. The data were analysed by converting the tokens of occurrence to percentages, the higher percentages being taken as the norm in each accent. The perceived norms were further captured using the arboreal and SWS notations of Metrical Phonology. In spite of earlier declarations that Nigerian English (NE hereafter) is a homogenous variety in terms of stress assignment, the results of the study highlight the differences in the stress patterns of Igbo English (IE hereafter) and Yoruba English (YE hereafter)both regional accents of NE; leaving us with the puzzle of deciding between such variable stress patterns as PROtein~proTEIN, UMbrella~umBRELla, CEremony~ceREmony and EARring~earRING which should be adopted as the NE stress patterns of these words. The study, while emphasizing the need for the exploration of the geo-ethnic approach to the definition of NE, establishes that the differences in the phonologies of regional accents of NE exist not only at the segmental level but also at the supra-segmental level of stress.

Stress is, unarguably, the most widely researched prosodic concept. Consequently, attempts at analysing the stress systems of different human languages, that are stress dependent, have yielded a number of theories, notably rule-based and constraint-based theories. While the rule-based theories seek to establish the sequences of rules which derive the surface form from the underlying form, the constraint-based theories focus on the interaction between series of (in)violable constraints that determine which of the infinite candidates associated with an input representation is the most well-formed output form. Focusing on the Sound Pattern of English (SPE) model of the Generative theory (a rule-based approach) and Optimality theory (a constraint-based approach), this chapter reviews both approaches identifying their conceptual distinctions. It establishes that, to a large extent, rules and constraints achieve the same goal and neither can be reasonably judged superior to the other.

Language has always been known to be central to religious worship to the point that particular religions tend to hold on to particular languages as sacred or official. This study, using data from a questionnaire administered on Catholics selected from seven out of the fifteen deaneries in the Archdiocese of Lagos, Nigeria, investigates the dominant linguistic pattern of Catholic liturgy in the archdiocese. It reveals a case of unconscious linguicism resulting in a tendency towards monolingualism and the domination of English over Latin (the language of liturgy and of most sacred and official documents of the Church) and indigenous Nigerian languages. By extension, the study traces the root of the threatening extinction of the mother tongue to the place of worship, taking into cognizance the contributions of the home and school.

For many decades, the conceptualization of English language teaching as well as the methodologies adopted for the teaching of English pronunciation to non-native speakers has been largely native-speaker centered. The major implication of this is the promotion of native-speaker speech norms as the target norm for pronunciation for the NNS, while the attendant effect is the derivation of the entire pronunciation teaching content from the native speaker linguistic and socio-cultural environment. However, native-like competence in English pronunciation has remained largely unattainable for the non-native learner, but despite this ineffectiveness, there has been continued insistence on native-like performance targets in the NNS pronunciation classroom. In this paper, the outcomes of various intelligibility studies which examined the level of understanding of inner-circle speech are presented. These speech intelligibility tests have concluded that native-speaker speech is not inherently i...

Abstract
The English language in its many varieties embodies the legacy of European colonisation in
many African countries, with the consequence of making many Africans bilingual in English and
their indigenous languages. One controversial issue about bilingualism in Africa, however, has
been the question of accent; given that both endoglossic and exoglossic models exist for English
pronunciation. Obviously, on paper, many Anglophone African countries settle for the „prestige‟
accent of their colonial masters which, in former British colonies, is the Received Pronunciation
(RP). However, a close look at the accent of English spoken/ taught in a country like Nigeria
shows that what obtains is a hybrid accent manifesting not just local features but also
pronunciation features of more than one exoglossic standard. Using primary data collected from
100 teachers and students of English in Lagos, Nigeria, the study reveals the confusion created
by the coexistence of these multiple pronunciation models in the country. The study, therefore,
lends its voice to the query about the rationale behind the adoption of exoglossic spoken models
for the teaching of English pronunciation in Anglophone African countries.
Keywords: Accent, Exoglossic, Endoglossic, Standard, bilingualism, pluricentrism, Model.

An obvious legacy of European colonialism within the African continent is the existence of varieties of the English language across the continent, some of which have earned the label "New Englishes". Although there are striking similarities among these varieties, particularly within individual sub-regions, the drastic differences which also mark their pronunciation patterns (in particular) have made it sacrosanct that each be recognised as a distinct variety of English. This study investigates this trend particularly with regard to the NURSE vowel /ɜ:/ whose pronunciation has been a perennial problem for the average African user of English; leading to its restructuring to a large number of alternative phones. Taking an in-depth look at the different patterns of realisation of this vowel across African Englishes (AEs)-a situation reckoned among the splits in the African Lexical Set-the study investigates current trends in the Nigerian English (NigE) pronunciation of the vowel in NURSE words using selected primary and secondary school teachers in Lagos. It opines that the current trend foreshadows the emergence of a merger of the NURSE and DRESS vowels as [ɛ].