Syllable Pattern and Structure in Audio-visual Cameroon and Nigerian Englishes Contrasted

Abstract

Listening to Nigerian-made (Nollywood) and Cameroonian-made (Collywood) audio-visual materials, which are mostly movies and popular music songs, reveals sharp syllable pattern contrasts between Audio-visual Cameroon English (henceforth AVCamE) and Audio-visual Nigerian English (henceforth AVNigE), despite their manifold similarities in the way they diverge from RP. This paper seeks to contrast the syllable structure/patterns of AVNigE and AVCamE as depicted by audio-visual materials. Data for the paper were collected from 120 audio-visual materials, mainly movies and pop songs. Out of the 120 audio-visual materials, 60 were Nollywood-made and 60 were Collywood-made. Of the 60 from each country, 30 were movies and 30 pop songs. From these audio-visual materials, 400 excerpts were garnered from 160 audio-visual speakers (actors, actresses and musicians); 200 excerpts from 80 AVCamE speakers and 200 excerpts from 80 AVNigE speakers. The Syllable Structure Theory and Comparative Linguistics were employed in this paper. The data were analysed qualitatively with some instances of quantitative analysis. The findings reveal that though speakers of both AVCamE and AVNigE converge in the manner in which they diverge from native-speaker varieties (monophthongisation, diphthongisation, vowel substitution, final consonant deletion, final consonant devoicing, and vowel epenthesis), both African audio-visual Englishes differ in their syllable structures either at the onset, nucleus or coda positions. The study concludes that such differences should be treated as divergences, rather than errors, and considered as free variants within West African English.