Primary-stress placement in Nigerian L1 English

Abstract This study investigates primary-stress placement in Nigerian L1 English (NL1E), an emerging accent of young Nigerians who acquire English as a first language, in order to account for the speakers’ stress patterns and the factors influencing them. In total, 194 lexical items were analysed, comprising 82 disyllabic words, 52 trisyllabic words and 60 morphologically complex words extracted from a passage read by 100 participants. The results reveal a blend of two stress systems — inner circle and distinctive NigE — with a slight preference for the inner-circle stress norms. Syllable weight and affix type were found to significantly influence stress placement. The findings portray NL1E stress as a hybrid system drifting towards the exonormative standard, possibly driven by the speakers’ continuous exposure to inner-circle accents through diction instruction and non-enculturation sources of learning.