Compound stress in educated Igbo and Yoruba accents of Nigerian English

This study examines compound stress in Igbo and Yoruba accents of Nigerian English and juxtaposes their patterns with Standard British English (SBE). Speech recorded from 60 educated Igbo and Yoruba speakers of Nigerian English and three Britons served as data and control respectively. These recordings were analysed perceptually and acoustically. Using simple percentage and chi-square, occurrence of tokens and levels of significance were checked between the compound stress patterns of educated Igbo and Yoruba speakers of English and SBE at 0.05 (p ≤ .05). Optimality theory serves as the theoretical framework. The findings indicate that educated Igbo and Yoruba speakers of Nigerian English, though share certain patterns with SBE, have significant patterns of variations in compound stress assignment. There was a systematic attempt by the Nigerian participants to align left, while SBE aligns right. This showed the propensity of the participants to analogically accentuate the constituent of the compounds that carry significant information. This pattern was supported by the higher pitch and durational values recorded by speakers of educated Igbo and Yoruba accents of Nigerian English. Even in cases where there were similarities in the patterns, the acoustic features vary. This is common to both accents of Nigerian English.