A Sociophonetic Study on TH Variation in Educated Nigerian English (original) (raw)

This study examines the realization of the voiceless dental fricative /θ/ and its variation (TH variation) by educated Nigerian English speakers and presents the preliminary results. Previous studies on TH variation (e.g. [17], [19], and [1]) have found that /θ/ is often realized as [t] in Nigerian English. However, there is a lack of systematic review of TH variation and an investigation of its potential correlation with social factors. In the present study, the TH production of 33 speakers (18m15f) were examined. They were selected from the Nigerian component of the International Corpus of English (ICE Nigeria) based on their age, gender, and ethnic group. Identified tokens were analysed using a mixed-effects logistic regression model.