Structural Nativization of English in Uganda: Evidence from Number Agreement and Interrogatives among Acholi Speakers of English
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Abstract
The current study unveils two features of structural nativization of English in Uganda involving L1 speakers of Acholi, elicited by number agreement and interrogatives. Sixty acrolectal Acholi speakers of English took part in recorded semi-structured interviews and a written elicitation test comprising fifteen multiple-choice questions. Fourteen-thousand words were obtained from the interviews and these were supplemented with 15,000 words obtained from the ICE-Uganda, thereby making a 29,000-word corpus. Text files for the corpus and scores from the elicitation test were generated and analyzed. Our findings indicate, among others, that there is evidence of the use of the suffix “-s” (and its allomorphs) on verbs with plural subjects and no suffix with singular subjects among Acholi speakers of English, while there is also a tendency of leaving the Wh-phrase in situ in all types of interrogatives. In both cases, the role of Acholi as a substrate language can be seen, while analogical leveling also favors such peculiarities, given that superstrate English has, for example, echo questions, where no movement occurs. This study thus provides more evidence of the structural nativization of English in Uganda, thereby augmenting discourse on the development of Ugandan English as a second language variety of English.
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