First language influence and final consonant clusters in the new Englishes of Singapore and Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigates the possible influence of L1 structures on the linguistic system of New Englishes. It focuses on the realization of final consonant clusters in two 'new' varieties of English for which L1 influence has been reported: Singapore English and Nigerian English. Although a comparison of the phonological structure of the background languages in the two countries with the phonological structure of English predicts the same type of influence in both varieties, the analyses in this study show great variation between the New Englishes in terms of overall cluster reduction rate, influence of cluster length, variation with following phonetic context and the reduction patterns of certain types of clusters. It is argued that these discrepancies are due to the different status of English in Singapore and Nigeria. The Norm-Orientation Hypothesis is proposed, which claims that the spread of L1 structures in a new variety of English is crucially influenced by the specific sociolinguistic settings. © 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.