Abstract
This paper looks at the acquisition of a localized variety of English- 'Educated Nigerian English' - in three groups of 3-year-old children before and after one nursery school year. The groups consisted of those acquiring English first (L1), those acquiring English and Igbo simultaneously (Lla + L1b) and those acquiring English (L2) after Igbo. An analysis of the errors in English revealed that while all groups showed developmental errors, those acquiring two languages simul taneously showed significantly more unique errors. There were no clear instances of unacceptable interference errors from Igbo. It is argued that this supports Dulay & Burt's 'identity' hypothesis.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
