Word Stress Patterns of Yoruba-English Bilingual Children

This study examined the stress patterns of Yoruba-English bilingual children in English disyllabic words. One hundred Nigerian children from two southwestern states in Nigeria served as the study participants. The data for the study comprise six disyllabic nouns (mother, baby, daughter, textbooks, person and village), three disyllabic verbs (believed, become, provide), and one disyllabic adverb (enough). The findings reveal that both word initial and word final stress patterns were used in pronouncing English disyllabic words by Yoruba-English bilingual children in Ogun and Oyo states. Village, mother, baby, daughter and person were stressed on the initial syllable, while enough, provide, textbooks, believed and become were stressed on the final syllable. Except for textbooks, the stress patterns of the participants were similar to the Standard British English (SBE) patterns presented in the 18 edition of Daniel Jones’ Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary. However, some of the Yoruba-English bilingual children from the public schools experienced difficulty in pronouncing some of the tested disyllabic words. This could be a function of certain non-linguistic factors like the unavailability of well-trained instructors and exposure to English words.