ABSTRACT
The goal of this work is the synthesis of the first comprehensive grammar of Nigerian Pidgin. Chapters 1–5 provide basic descriptive and analytic treatment of the syntax, morphology and phonology of this increasingly important language, which may soon become the most widely spoken language in all of Africa. The topics covered and the numerical system used to index and order each section are those listed on the Lingua Descriptive Studies (Croom Helm) Questionnaire, which first appeared in Lingua, vol. 42 (1977), no. 1. The Lingua Questionnaire was designed by Bernard Comrie and Norval Smith to provide a comprehensive and flexible framework for the creation of a set of mutually comparable grammars which would be as ‘theoretically unbiased’ as possible. In this study, slight modifications have been made to the Questionnaire, especially in the areas of verb serialization (see section 1.3.1.1.4), ideophones (see 4.1) and word order (see 1.2.5.3).
