Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer
cjls

Articles

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2022): COVENANT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE STUDIES

WORD STRESS PATTERNS OF YORUBA-ENGLISH BILINGUAL CHILDREN

Submitted
December 5, 2023
Published
2023-12-13

Abstract

Stress is one of the prosodic features of English, in addition to intonation and rhythm. Many English learners have great difficulty with these prosodic features. The need to urgently address this challenge motivated this study and many others. This study examined the stress patterns of Yoruba-English bilingual children in English disyllabic words. One hundred Nigerian children from two south-western states in Nigeria served as the study participants. The data for the study comprise six disyllabic nouns (mother, baby, daughter, textbooks, person and village), three disyllabic verbs (believed, become, provide), and one disyllabic adverb (enough). The findings reveal that both word initial and word final stress patterns were used in pronouncing English disyllabic words by Yoruba-English bilingual children in Ogun and Oyo states. Village, mother, baby, daughter and person were stressed on the initial syllable, while enough, provide, textbooks, believed and become were stressed on the final syllable. Except for textbooks,the stress patterns of the participants were similar to the Standard British English (SBE) patterns presented in the 18th edition of Daniel Jones’ Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary. However, some of the Yoruba-English bilingual children from the public schools experienced difficulty in pronouncing some of the tested disyllabic words.

References

  1. Akindele. J. (2017). Stressed and Unstressed Syllable Alternation in Educated Edo (Nigerian) English. Journal of Language and Education, 3(4): 52-59.
  2. Akinjobi, A. &Oladipupo, R. (2010). Intonation and Attitude in Nigerian English. A Journal of Contemporary Research 7 (1): 159-167.
  3. Akinjobi, A. (2011). Academic Competence and Linguistic Performance: A Study of English Intonation Tune Assignment by some Nigerian English Language Postgra duate Students. Africal Nebula, 4:66-76.
  4. Anyangwa, C. 2021. Geo-Ethnic Variations in Nigerian English Word Stress. Lagos Review of English Studies (LARES)20 (2): 1-27.
  5. Archangeli, D. (1997). Optimality Theory: An Introduction to Linguistics in the 1990s. I D.Archangeli & D. Langendeon (Eds.), Optimality Theory: An Overview (pp.1-32).Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.28 .1.531
  6. Atoye, R. O. 1989. African Languages as Just Tone and not Intonation Languages: A Case Study of Yoruba and English. Epasa Moto: A Bilingual Journal of Language, Letters and Culture,1(1): 1-14
  7. Banjo, A. (1996). Making a Virtue of Reality: An Overview of the English Language in Nigeria. Ibadan: Ibadan UP.
  8. Church, S. M. (1994). Is whole Language Really Warm and Fuzzy? The Reading Teacher, 47, 362- 370.
  9. Essien, N.M. (2018). Stress and Rhythm in the Educated Nigerian Accent of English. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences. 8 (10): 30-42.
  10. Faleye, J.O. (2014). Variant Word Stress Pattern in the Spoken English of Selected Nigerian Teachers. Covenant Journal of Language Studies (CJLS), 2 (1): 46-66.
  11. Frid, J. (2001). Swedish Word Stress in Optimality Theory. Working Papers, Lund University, Department of Linguistics. Vol. 48. Retrieved from http://www.ling/u.se/dissemination/pdf/ 48/frid.pdf.
  12. Jowitt, D. (1991). Nigerian English Usage: An Introduction. Ibadan: Longman.
  13. Jowitt, D. (2000). Patterns of Nigerian English intonation. English World-Wide 21:63-80.
  14. Kager, R. (1999). Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. https://doi.org/10.1016/S00243841(00)00 012-7
  15. McCarthy, J. & Prince, A. (1993). Faithfulness and Reduplicative Identity. University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics. Eds. J. Beckman, L.W. Dickey & S. Urbanczyk. Amherst, MA: GLSA. 18: 249-384.
  16. McGarrity, L. W. (2003). Constraints on Patterns of Primary and Secondary Stress. Indiana: Indiana University. Thesis. Linguistics, Graduate Faculty. Retrieved June 30, 2017. http://roa.rutgers.edu/.../651McGarrity- 1-0...pdf.
  17. Osifeso, A.E. 2017. Word Stress among Yoruba L2 Speakers of English in Lagos: an Optimality approach. MAJELS 2(10): 19-28.
  18. Osifeso, A.E. 2020. An Optimality Approach to Word Stress Analysis in Yoruba-English. Journal of the Association of Phoneticians and Phonologists in Nigeria 1: 27-54.
  19. Prince, A. & Smolensky, P. (1993). Optimality Theory: Constraints Interaction in Generative Grammar. Report no. Ruccs-Tr2, Now Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Centre for Cognitive Science.
  20. Prince, A. & Smolensky, P. (2004). Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. In J. J. McCarthy (Ed.) Optimality Theory in Phonology, (pp.3-72).Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
  21. Stemberger, J.P. & Bernhardt, B.H. (1997). Optimality Theory. In M. Ball & R. Kent (Eds.), The New Phonologies, (pp 211- 245). San Diego, CA: Singular Publishing Group.
  22. Sunday A. B. (2011). Compound Stress in Nigerian English. English Today, 27 (3) 43-51 doi: 10.1017/S026607841100037X.
  23. Sunday, A. B. & Oyatokun, O. O. (2016). Optimality Theoretical Analysis of Word Stress in Educated Nigerian English. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics. 13 (1): 87-106.
  24. Sunday, A.B. & Oyemade, O.O. (2021). Features of Tone in Nigerian English Stress Pattern. Covenant Journal of Language Studies (CJLS). 9(1): 14-38.
  25. Taiwo, R. (2009). The Functions of English in Nigeria from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. English Today, 25: 3-10. Doi:10.1017/S0266078409000121
  26. Tiffen, B.W. (1974). The Intelligibility of Nigerian English. PhD Thesis. University of London.
  27. Udofot, I. (2003). Stress and Rhythm in the Nigerian Accent of English. English World-Wide, 24(2), 201- 220.
  28. Ward, I. C. (1952). An Introduction to the Yoruba Language. Cambridge: Heffer.