Shadiya Mohamed Saleh Baqutayan Verbal ‘Intraference’ in Educated Nigerian English (ENE)

Abstract

‘Intraference’ is used here for Selinker’s ‘the overgeneralization of target language rules’ (1984, p. 37), Richards and Sampson’s ‘internal language transfer’(1984, pp.6-13)  and Labovian internal principle/factors of linguistic change/variability (1994). The purpose is to achieve economy and precision of terms, which is preferred in linguistics. Library research, questionnaires, observation and recording of live linguistic events were used to gather examples from 2004 to 2012 to substantiate the incidence of verbal intraference and establish its enabling psycho-sociolinguistic causes. Verbal intraference is the (re)deployment of affixation and conversion processes to create verbs that may not be found in SBE and standard dictionaries. It was found that educated Nigerian deploy inflectional, derivational morphemes and conversion to fabricate verbal intraference variations, which distinguish Nigerian English morphology from SBE and other international varieties of English.

Keywords:  Intraference, Verbal intraference, Educated Nigerian English, ESL, Psycho-sociolinguistic, Affixation.