Syntactic variation in West African English

ABSTRACT: The major focus of this paper is a description of syntactic variation in West African English with examples from West African English literature. The following categories of syntactic variation in West African English are identified and described: subjectless sentences, deletion of the ‐ ly morpheme in manner adjuncts, omission of function words, reduplication, formation of interrogatives without changing the position of subject and auxiliary items, tag questions, the use of the progressive aspect with mental processes, non‐distinctive use of reciprocal pronouns, substitution of prepositions in idiomatic usage, and focus constructions. The fact that many of the syntactic features of West African English are also found in other varieties of non‐native Englishes around the world indicates that, contrary to the speculation of some scholars, the new Englishes have acquired some stable linguistic characteristics and that their usage cuts across various educational and socio‐economic strata in countries where English is used as an institutionalized second language. However, more comparative studies need to be done to uncover additional facts about the mutual linguistic relationships among the new Englishes.