---
title: "Assessing the so called Marked Inflectional Features of the"
description: "The paper asks whether inconsistent verb inflection in Nigerian English shows a distinct variety or ordinary second-language… 31 references."
authors: ["Boluwaji Oshodi"]
year: 2014
venue: "Ikala: Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura 19"
source: "https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/ikala/article/view/14303"
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licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/oshodi-2014-assessing-so-called-marked-inflectional/"
---
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# Assessing the so called Marked Inflectional Features of the Nigerian English: a Second Language Acquisition Theory Account

**Authors:** Boluwaji Oshodi · **Year:** 2014 · **Venue:** [Ikala: Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura 19](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/ikala-revista-de-lenguaje-y-cultura/) ([Íkala Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura 2014](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/ikala-revista-de-lenguaje-y-cultura/2014/)) · **Publisher:** [Universidad de Antioquia](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/universidad-de-antioquia/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA (journal licence per DOAJ; Ikala: Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.14303) · [PDF](https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/ikala/article/download/14303/17674) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W1709216196)

**Citations:** 2 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The paper asks whether inconsistent verb inflection in Nigerian English shows a distinct variety or ordinary second-language learning. Kirkpatrick (2011) listed the dropping or misuse of -s, -ed, -ing and -en as marked features of Nigerian English. Oshodi tests that claim with a cross-population comparison. Undergraduates at Nigerian universities (L1 Yorùbá) and Malaysian universities (L1 Malay) completed oral and written composition tasks. Neither L1 inflects verbs for tense or marks subject–verb agreement.

The analysis draws on the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH). This theory says L2 speakers have the underlying grammatical features but sometimes fail to retrieve the matching surface morphemes. Both groups dropped and misused inflections in much the same obligatory contexts. They also supplied the forms correctly elsewhere. The author therefore concludes the pattern is shared interlanguage behaviour, not a property of Nigerian English. This matters for the debate over whether new L2 Englishes count as varieties. The author notes that other grammatical areas still need examination.

## Key points
- The claim under test is Kirkpatrick (2011): omission or misuse of -s (3rd singular), -ed (past), -ing (continuous) and -en (past participle) marks Nigerian English.
- Participants were undergraduates in Nigeria (Yorùbá L1) and Malaysia (Malay L1). Data came from oral and written composition tasks.
- Yorùbá and Malay leave the verb (lọ / pergi, "go") unchanged across tenses. Yorùbá uses preverbal particles for continuous and future, and Malay uses akan for future. Neither has subject–verb agreement.
- The error pattern was directional, as MSIH predicts. Present forms (including bare forms without -s) appeared in past contexts, but past forms never appeared in present contexts.
- Learners sometimes supplied an inflection correctly and elsewhere omitted it in a similar context. This variability is read as a retrieval and mapping problem, not missing knowledge.

## Interesting ideas
- To test whether a pattern belongs to one group, compare it with a different group that shares the suspected cause (here, an L1 without tense inflection). If the pattern appears there too, it is not group-specific.
- Variable suppliance of the same morpheme in similar contexts shows the grammar is present and the surface form simply failed to appear. Treating such text as a noisy surface of standard grammar keeps analysis simpler than positing a new grammar.
- The errors run one way: present-for-past occurs, past-for-present does not. Knowing the direction of likely errors narrows which corrections are plausible.
- The markedness discussion (from Battistella) shows English present tense is unmarked for time and can express habitual, future or narrative-past meanings, while past tense clearly signals past.
- Counting suppliance of a form in obligatory contexts (places where native speakers would require it) gives a concrete way to measure morphological accuracy.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (learn): Build such contrast sets as negative controls, e.g., check whether a supposed corpus-specific parser error also shows up on another corpus with the same structural property.
- **I2** (tokens): Let the tagger and morphology accept bare verbs where -s or -ed is expected, assigning tense and agreement features from context rather than failing.
- **I3** (world): When building event order from non-native text, a bare or present verb in a past narrative can be reinterpreted as past, but a past form should be trusted as past.
- **I4** (world): Do not map present tense to "now" by default. Infer the time from adverbs and discourse, and treat past morphology as the stronger temporal signal.
- **I5** (back): Use obligatory-context checks to evaluate generated text, flagging missing agreement -s or past -ed wherever the meaning graph requires them.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

Also on the byline: [Universiti Malaysia Sarawak](https://ror.org/05b307002).

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## Cite

Cite as: Boluwaji Oshodi. 2014. Assessing the so called Marked Inflectional Features of the Nigerian English: a Second Language Acquisition Theory Account. Ikala: Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura 19.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{oshodi2014assessing,
  title = {{Assessing the so called Marked Inflectional Features of the Nigerian English: a Second Language Acquisition Theory Account}},
  author = {Boluwaji Oshodi},
  booktitle = {Ikala: Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura 19},
  year = {2014},
  doi = {10.17533/udea.ikala.14303},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ikala.14303}
}
```

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## References

31 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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*Updated 24 October 2026*