A DELINENATION OF ASSIMILATION, APOCOPE AND EPENTHESIS IN NIGERIAN-ENGLISH BASED PIDGIN

This study accounts for the processes of assimilation; apocope and epenthesis in Nigerian English based pidgin using the Optimality Theory approach. Accordingly, the motivation of this investigation is describing the mechanism of constraints in the alteration of inputs into outputs; specifically, showing how the occurrences of these processes are influenced by certain constraints to generate desirable outputs. Methodological concerns are qualitative in nature; explanatory discussions of spoken corpora of Nigerian celebrities accessed from discourse context of the British Broadcasting Cooperation Nigerian Pidgin Instagram chat series. Making use of a wordlist extracted from such sessions of free talks indicates the naturalness or spontaneity of this study’s speech data and thus, attesting that they are indeed suitable for a descriptive analysis. Consequently, this study’s analysis involves the interpretation of the aforementioned processes in the Nigerian-English based pidgin through the provision of mappings from input to output, as well as providing descriptive phonetic explications in the form of tableaux for the simplification of the production of otherwise intricate phonological structures by determining constraints. Results indicate the occurrences of assimilation, apocope and epenthesis in Nigerian-English based pidgin and that these processes result from specified conflicting faithfulness and markedness constraints within the OT framework. Essentially, findings from this investigation have several pedagogical inferences for researchers in phonological analysis as it validates the claim that OT can effectively link surface forms to underlying structures, while simultaneously adhering to the phonological system of a language; in this instance, the Nigerian-English based pidgin.