Patterns of pronunciation of English interdental fricatives by some Yoruba speakers of English in a Nigerian University
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Date
2018-05-13
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
This paper is an investigation of the pronunciation patterns of English interdental fricatives by
some Yoruba speakers of English at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife. This was with
a view to finding out the extent to which gender, the level of education, and the position in words
of the interdental fricatives (i.e., the (th) variable as in think, pathetic, and path on the one hand,
and the (dh) variable as in then, father, and clothe on the other hand) could affect the realisations
of these two fricatives, otherwise known as (th) and (dh) variables. Data eventually used for this
study were drawn from the reading performance of thirty-three informants who were of Yoruba
origin. The thirty-three informants comprised 20 male and 13 female subjects with different levels
of education ranging from undergraduate to doctoral. Our findings indicated that the (dh) variable
was significantly affected by gender while the (th) variable was not. It was also demonstrated that
while the (th) was significantly affected by the level of education of informants, the (dh) variable
had no statistically significant association with the speakers’ level of education. Finally, the
results of the study revealed that the position in a word (whether initial, medial, or final) of each
of the variables affected the realisations of the two variables significantly. It was therefore
concluded that sociolinguistic variables such as gender and the level of education were capable of
affecting the rendition of linguistic variables significantly.
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Keywords
pronunciation, inter-dental fricatives, Yoruba speakers of English, Nigerian English, phonology
Citation
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 53 (2018), pp. 25-43