Phonotactic Adjustments in Yoruba Adaptation of English Syllable Structures

Toyin Bamisaye, George Adekunle Ojo

Department of English and Literary Studies, Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria.

DOI: 10.4236/ojml.2015.54034                

Abstract

This paper examines the phonotactic processes in Yoruba adaptation of English syllable structures. It investigates the nativization of English consonant structure in the word-initial and word-final positions by Yoruba-English bilinguals. From the contact and influence of the English language and Yoruba language in an ESL environment, the fundamental thrust of linguistics would be to explicate the influence that one language would have on another. In this case, the focus is on the effects the English has on Yoruba. When these effects are viewed, it is discovered that structural rules are affected. Our findings reveal that vowel epenthesis is not constantly the repair device. Analysis of data shows that consonants are either preserved or deleted which justifies the earlier position of scholars of foreign syllable modifications.

Keywords

Phonotactics, Adaptation, Phoneme, Epenthesis, Nativization

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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