Plural nouns in Tswana English

ABSTRACT This study analyzes non‐standard plurals, which have been reported for several Outer and Expanding Circle varieties, in Tswana English as exemplified in the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE). The focus of the study is on substrate influence and transfer, which is often difficult to determine for African varieties of English given their extremely multilingual sociolinguistic setting. The results of the corpus analysis, compared to two typologically different Expanding Circle varieties, question the status of Tswana English as an Expanding Circle variety. In this context, this article discusses the Outer versus Expanding Circle distinction and the necessity to unequivocally assign a variety to either the Outer or Expanding Circle.