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Article published In: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 38:2 (2023) ► pp.290–319

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A corpus-driven description of o in Naijá (Nigerian Pidgin)

ORCiD logo with link | SeDyL, CNRS UMR-8202, INALCO, IRD UR-135
ORCiD logo with link | CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Published online: 29 May 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.22016.man
Abstract
Widely attested in both creole and non-creole languages of the Atlantic basin, the function word o has been traditionally described as a ‘sentence/phrase final particle’, owing to its typical syntactic behaviour, rather than to its multiple grammatical meanings. Based on the corpus-driven analysis of the NaijaSynCor, a ~400K words corpus of spoken Naijá (i.e., Nigerian Pidgin), this study suggests that sentence-final o can be better described as an ‘illocutionary force indicator’ whose main pragmatic function is to modify the illocutionary force associated with directive and assertive speech acts. The study also provides evidence for the emergence of new coordinating and subordinating functions of o in intra-sentential position that are semantically harmonic with its assertive (i.e. epistemic) meaning in sentence-final position. The corpus-driven analysis further shows that the higher occurrence of sentence-final o in (formal and informal) dialogic texts in comparison to monologic texts is a reflex of its basic illocutionary function.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Corpus and methodology
    • 2.1The corpus
    • 2.2O in the NaijaSynCor corpus
  • 3.The syntax and semantics of o in the NaijaSynCor corpus
    • 3.1Sentence-final o
    • 3.2Intra-sentential o
    • 3.3O in Unipartite Clauses
  • 4.O and genre variation
  • 5.A corpus-driven description of o in Naijá
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
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