Cover not available
Part of
Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes
Edited by Alexandra U. Esimaje, Ulrike Gut and Bassey E. Antia
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 88] 2019
► pp. 185–204

Chapter 2.1
Evaluating explanations for past-time reference with unmarked verb forms in African Englishes

| North-West University

Previous research suggests that some varieties of English in Africa do not mark the past tense consistently with an inflectional suffix. Various explanations are offered for this state of affairs, including the option of the historical present tense, non-marking because the context already makes clear that the verb denotes a past event, phonological reduction, and limited English language proficiency. This chapter reports on a corpus analysis of spoken conversation in Nigerian English and Black South African English, which indicates that the non-marking of the past tense occurs in about one in every five contexts where an event in the past is represented. However, no convincing support is found for any of the explanations in the previous research on the topic.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Possible explanations for the non-marking of the past tense
  • 3.Method
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.88.09van
References (26)
Alo, M. A. & Mesthrie, Rajend
2008 Nigerian English: morphology and syntax. In Varieties of English, 4: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), 323–339. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward
1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
de Klerk, Vivian
2003 Xhosa English as an institutionalised variety of English: In search of evidence. English World-Wide 24(2): 221–243. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006 Corpus Linguistics and World Englishes: An Analysis of Xhosa-English. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
de Klerk, Vivian & Gough, David
2002 Black South African English. In Language in South Africa, Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), 356–378. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gough, David
1996 Black English in South Africa. In Focus on South Africa, [Varieties of English around the World G15], Vivian de Klerk (ed.), 53–77. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Finn, Stephen M.
1986 The abuse of English by students at Vista University. English Usage in Southern Africa 17: 1–8.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney
2003 The verb. In The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Rodney Huddleston & Gregory K. Pullum (eds), 71–212. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Hudson-Ettle, Diana M. & Schmied, Josef
1999 Manual to Accompany The East African Component of The International Corpus of English. Chemnitz: Chemnitz University of Technology. [URL]> (13 November 2017).
Jowitt, David
1991 Nigerian English usage. Ikeja: Longman Nigeria.Google Scholar
Makalela, Leketi
2004 Making sense of BSAE for linguistic democracy in South Africa. World Englishes 23: 355–366. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Black South African English on the radio. World Englishes 32(1): 93–107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCormick, Kay
2008 Cape Flats English: Morphology and syntax. In Varieties of English, 4: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), 521–534. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Meierkord, Christiane
2012 Interactions Across Englishes: Linguistic Choices in Local and International Contexts. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meshtrie, Rajend
2008 Black South African English: Morphology and syntax. In Varieties of English, 4: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), 488–500. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mesthrie, Rajend & Bhatt, Rakesh
2008 World Englishes. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Minow, Verena
2010 Variation in the Grammar of Black South African English. Franfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Platt, John, Heidi Weber & Mian L. Ho
1984 The New Englishes. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Schmied, Josef
2008 East African English (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania): Morphology and syntax. In Varieties of English, 4: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), 451–471. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W.
2008 Synopsis: Morphological and syntactic variation in the Americas and the Caribbean. In Varieties of English, Vol. 2: The Americas and the Caribbean, Edgar W. Schneider (ed.), 763–776. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Statsoft
2005 Statistica Data Miner. Tulsa: Statsoft.Google Scholar
van der Walt, Johann L. & van Rooy, Bertus
2002 Towards a norm in South African Englishes. World Englishes 21: 113–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Rooy, Bertus
2007 Consonant clusters and resyllabification in Black South African English. Language Matters 38(1): 26–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Present perfect and past tense in Black South African English. In Re-assessing the Present Perfect in English: Corpus Studies and Beyond, Valentin Werner, Cristina Suárez-Gómez & Elena Seoane (eds), 150–168. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Werner, Valentin & Fuchs, Robert
2017 The present perfect in Nigerian English. English Language and Linguistics 21(1): 129–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wunder, Eva-Maria, Voormann, Holger & Gut, Ulrike
2010 The ICE Nigeria corpus project: Creating an open, rich and accurate corpus. ICAME Journal 34: 78–88.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by 2 other publications

Bohmann, Axel & Adesoji Babalola
2023. Verbal past inflection in Nigerian English. In New Englishes, New Methods [Varieties of English Around the World, G68], ► pp. 16 ff. DOI logo
Botha, Werner, Bertus van Rooy & Susan Coetzee‐van Rooy
2021. South African Englishes: A contemporary bibliography. World Englishes 40:1 ► pp. 136 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 june 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.