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Browsing Scholarly Publication by Author "Amirah Abidemi Affinih"

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    A Generative Phonological Approach to the Analysis of Selected Undergraduates’ Utterances
    (2022) Amirah Abidemi Affinih; Mariam Titilope Olugbodi
    Language variation isfacilitated by language contacts .Nigerian Scholars have over the years embarked on the description ofthe taxonomy ofNigerian English atthe level ofphonology and three major varieties have been identified by scholars over the years—the yet to be codified acrolect ,the Standard Nigerian English (SNE);themesolect,which isthe intermediate variety,Popular Nigerian English (PNE)thebasilect,andNigerianPidginEnglish (NPE),whichisthesubstrate variety.Theaim ofthisstudy isto identify the phonological features ofNigerian English inselected undergraduates ’ utterances.Particularly ,the study sets out toinvestigate whether the university undergraduates are representatives of the acrolect or mesolect based on their level of educational attainment .The utterances of ten (10) 400 level undergraduates ofKwara State University were analysed using a juxtapositional approach.Fifty randomly selectedwordsfromtheutteranceswereanalysed using the Distinctive Feature Approach .The study revealed that most ofthe deviant phonemes are syllabic in nature because they aremostly vowels.Also,there are instances ofsubstitution oftheSNEdiphthongs withtheSpeakers’VarietySVmonophthongsasaresultofthedisparitiesinthephonemiccomponentsof the SNE and the speakers ’first language .The study concluded that the attainment of the SNE in the Nigerian context isfeasible ifthe codification ofthe SNE can beattained toaid the syllabus design for Englishlanguagepedagogyinanon-nativecontextasNigeria.