A Basic Description and Analytic Treatment of Noun Clauses in Nigerian Pidgin

Abstract

This paper presents descriptions and analyses of noun clauses attested in my data of Nigerian Pidgin English as spoken in the southern Nigerian city of Port Harcourt. It will be shown that in Nigerian Pidgin noun clauses may optionally begin with the noun clause introducer 'se'. This is the only morphological marking device, which distinguishes noun clauses from other clauses. Additionally, noun clauses in the language occur in one of two syntactic positions following the verb of their super-ordinate clause: the object position or the adverbial position. Since there is little or no evidence in Nigerian Pidgin to make a case for the existence of categories like the ‘copular’, ‘adjective’, or ‘intransitive verb’. Hence, the standpoint taken in this paper is that a noun clause that does not occupy the adverbial position can be said to be the syntactic object of the verb of the clause to which it is subordinate.