Cover not available
Part of
New Englishes, New Methods
Edited by Guyanne Wilson and Michael Westphal
[Varieties of English Around the World G68] 2023
► pp. 108–131

Question intonation patterns in Nigerian English

ORCID logo | University of Bremen
| TU Dortmund University
This study investigates the intonation patterns in wh-questions and yes/no-questions used by educated Nigerian speakers of English. It examines the possible influence of gender, ethnicity, and question type on the prosodic marking of questions. Audio recordings taken from the Nigerian component of the International Corpus of English were annotated in Praat using the tones and breaks indices transcription convention. The results show that there are similar intonation patterns among Nigerian speakers. Both wh-questions and yes/no-questions tend to start with a level tone; while wh-questions end mostly with a falling tone, yes/no-questions end either with a falling or a rising tone. The results demonstrate that whereas gender has no significant effect, both ethnicity and question type significantly influence intonation patterns.
Keywords: intonation patterns, Nigerian English, tones and break indices, New Englishes, question forms
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Variation in Nigerian English
  • 3.Question intonation across Englishes
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Measuring intonation in English
    • 4.2Question forms
    • 4.3Speakers
    • 4.4Annotation and analysis
    • 4.5Regression modelling
  • 5.Findings and discussion
    • 5.1Initial boundary
    • 5.2Final boundary
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 April 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g68.06oye
References (47)
References
Akinjobi, Adenike. 2012. Vowel Weakening and Unstressed Syllable Obscuration in Yoruba English. Chisinau: Lambert Academic Publishing.Google Scholar
Bartels, Christine. 1999. The Intonation of English Statements and Questions: A Compositional Interpretation. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Beckman, Mary E., Julia Hirschberg, & Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel. 2005. “The Original ToBI System and the Evolution of the ToBI Framework.” Prosodic Models and Transcription: Towards Prosodic Typology, ed. by Sun-Ah Jun, 1–37. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul, & David Weenink. 2015. Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer (Version 6.0.05). <[URL]> (3 January 2019).
Bolinger, Dwight. 1982. “Intonation and its Parts.” Language 58: 505–533. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clopper, Cythia G., & Rajka Smijanic. 2011. “Effects of Gender and Regional Dialect on Prosodic Patterns in American English.” Journal of Phonetics 39 (2): 237–245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cruttenden, Alan. 1994. “Rises in English.” Studies in General and English Phonetics, ed. by Jack Windsor-Lewis, 155–173. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 1997. Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2001. “Mancunian Intonation and Intonational Representation.” Phonetica 58: 53–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Daly, Nicola, & Paul Warren. 2001. “Pitching it Differently in New Zealand English: Speaker Sex and Intonation Patterns.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 5 (1): 85–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dyrenko, Natalia, & Robert Fuchs. 2018. “The Diphthongs of Formal Nigerian English: A Preliminary Acoustic Analysis.” Proceedings of Interspeech 2018, Hyderabad, 2563–2567. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, & Charles D. Fennig (eds). 2020. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 23rd ed. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. <[URL]> (13 July 2022).
Eka, David. 1985. A Phonological Study of Standard Nigerian English. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University.
Goh, Christine C. M. 1995. “Intonation Features of Singapore English.” Teaching and Learning 15 (2): 25–37.Google Scholar
Greenbaum, Sidney, & Gerald Nelson. 1996. “The International Corpus of English (ICE) Project.” World Englishes 15 (1): 3–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2004. The Phonology of Tone and Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. “On the Intonation of Tonal Varieties of English.” The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes, eds. by Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, & Devyani Sharma, 569–598. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gut, Ulrike. 2003. “Nigerian English: A Typical West African Language?” Proceedings of the Anglistentag 2002 Bayreuth, eds. by Ewald Mengel, Hans-Jörg Schmid, & Michael Steppat, 461–471. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.Google Scholar
. 2005. “Nigerian English Prosody.” English World-Wide 26 (2): 153–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. “Nigerian English Phonology.” Varieties of English Vol IV, ed. by Rajend Mesthrie, 35–54. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Gut, Ulrike, & Stefanie Pillai. 2014. “Prosodic Marking of Information Structure by Malaysian Speakers of English.” Studies in Second Language Acquisition 36 (2): 283–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory. 1993. “The Quantitative Analysis of Linguistic Variation.” American Dialect Research, ed. by Dennis Preston, 223–249. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haji Rozaimee, Siti F. 2014. “The Intonation of Questions in Brunei.” Southeast Asia: A Multidisciplinary Journal 14: 23–28Google Scholar
Hansen, Beke. 2018. Corpus Linguistics and Sociolinguistics: A study of Variation and Change in the Modal Systems of World Englishes. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hedberg, Nancy, Juan Sosa, & Lorna Fadden. 2004. “Meanings and Configurations of Questions in English.” Proceedings of Speech Prosody, Nara, Japan, 309–312.Google Scholar
Jamakovic, Nisad, & Robert Fuchs. 2019. “The Monophthongs of Formal Nigerian English: An Acoustic Analysis.” Proceedings of Interspeech 2019, Graz, Austria, 1711–1715. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jiang, Hong-Wen. 2011. “Gender Difference in English Intonation.” Proceedings of ICPhS XVII, Hong Kong, 974–977.Google Scholar
Jibril, Munzali. 1986. “Sociolinguistic Variation in Nigerian English.” English World-Wide 7 (1): 47–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Daniel E. 2009. “Getting off the GoldVarb Standard: Introducing Rbrul for Mixed-Effects Variable Rule Analysis.” Language and Linguistics Compass 3 (1): 359–383. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jowitt, David. 2000. “Patterns of Nigerian English Intonation.” English World-Wide 21 (1): 63–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. Nigerian English. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kraft, Charles H. 1970. “Tone in Hausa” African Studies 29 (2): 129–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1970. “English Question Intonation.” Studies Presented to Robert B. Lees by His Students, eds. by Jerrold M. Sadock, & Anthony L. Vanek, 139–161. Edmonton: Linguistic Research Inc.Google Scholar
Lim, Lisa. 2000. “Ethnic Groups Differences Aligned? Intonation Patterns of Chinese, Indian and Malay Singaporean English.” The English Language in Singapore: Research on Pronunciation, eds. by Adam Brown, David Deterding, & Ee Ling Low, 10–21. Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Okoli, Chukwunonyelum E. 2017. “The Tone Marking System of the Igbo Language: A Documentary Overview.” Igbo Language Studies 2: 31–42.Google Scholar
Oyebola, Folajimi, Sin Yu B. Ho, & Zeyu Li. 2019. “A Sociophonetic Study on TH Variation in Educated Nigerian English.” Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetics Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019, eds. by Sasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain, & Paul Warren, 2320–2323. Australia Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.Google Scholar
Oyetade, Benjamin A. 1988. Issues in the Analysis of Yoruba Tone. PhD dissertation, University of London.
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. 1980. The Phonology and Phonetics of English Intonation. PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Speelman, Dirk. 2014. “Logistic Regression: A Confirmatory Technique for Comparisons in Corpus Linguistics.” Corpus Methods for Semantics: Quantitative Studies in Polysemy and Synonymy, eds. by Dylan Glynn, & Justyna A. Robinson, 487–533. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tan, Ying Ying. 2010. “Singing the Same Tune? Prosodic Norming in Bilingual Singaporeans.” Multilingual Norms, ed. by Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, 173–194. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Udofot, Inyang. 1997. The Rhythm of Spoken Nigerian English. PhD dissertation, University of Uyo.
. 2003. “Stress and Rhythm in the Nigerian Accent of English.” English World-Wide 24 (2): 201–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ukam, Edadi I., God’sgift O. Uwen, & Christiana Omale. 2017. “Intonational Structure of Erei Speakers of English.” International Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (8): 49–64.Google Scholar
Warren, Paul, & Nicola Daly. 2000. “Sex as a Factor in Rises in New Zealand English.” Gendered Speech in Social Context: Perspectives from Gown and Town, ed. by Janet Holmes, 99–115. Wellington: Victoria University Press.Google Scholar
Westphal, Michael, & Guyanne Wilson. 2020. “New Englishes, New Methods: Focus on Corpus Linguistics.” Anglistik 31 (1): 47–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wunder, Eva-Maria, Holger Voormann, & Ulrike Gut. 2010. “The ICE Nigeria Corpus Project: Creating an Open, Rich and Accurate Corpus.” ICAME Journal 34: 78–88.Google Scholar
Yap, Tsong S., & Stefanie Pillai. 2018. “Intonation Patterns of Questions in Malaysian English.” Asian Englishes 20 (3): 192–205.Google Scholar