Realisations of the Past Tense Allomorphs by Selected Nigerian English Language Teachers

This study investigated the pronunciation of the regular past tense morpheme by selected Nigerian English Language teachers, with a view to determining the manifestation of this morpheme in Nigerian English. Twenty-four English Language teachers from both public and private secondary schools in Ibadan, southwestern Nigeria served as participants
in this study. The data, which consisted of fifteen words with regular past tense forms, were woven into isolated sentences and a reading passage. Besides, the participants were requested to speak on a given topic. The renditions of the participants were audio tape-recorded. The participants pronounced the regular past tense morpheme ‘-d’ or ‘-ed’ as /d/ and /t/ in words whose bases end with a voiceless sound, as /d/ in words whose bases end with a voiced sound, and as /ed/ and /d/ in words whose bases end with either of the two alveolar plosives /t/ or /d/. Based on these findings, the study concluded that the participants’ pronunciation of regular past tense words varied a little from the pronunciation of such words in Received Pronunciation.

Keywords: Past tense morpheme, Allomorphs, Alveolar plosive, Nigerian English Language teachers