Structural simplicity/complexity is an important variable with which New Englishes and native varieties are identified and conceptualised, but predicting such variation in complexity has received little attention in the literature. New Englishes, especially the outer circle varieties such as Nigerian or Indian English, differ in form and function from the inner circle varieties, such as British or American English, but the extent of such variation varies greatly and merits further investigation. According to Gorlach (1998), we should expect New Englishes to demonstrate simplification at the levels of morphology, lexis, and syntax. This has indeed been shown to be the case in some varieties, but it has also been shown that this variation differs according to different linguistic and non-linguistic factors. Most recently, Schilk and Schaub (2016) have shown how noun phrase (NP) structure can reveal the underlying structural simpification predicted in the New Englishes varieties. Brunner (2014) examined NP complexity across three New Englishes (British, Singaporean, and Kenyan English), explicating how grammars of the indigeneous languages in Singapore and Kenya influence NP simplicity/complexity.

The paper investigates the extent to which the grammatical number (dis)agreement hypothesis in the New Englishes (Platt et al 1984, Gorlach 1998, Mesthrie et al 2008 manifests in the determiner system of the Nigerian English, and how the variables of proficiency, text type, register, structural complexity, and syntactic form influence scenarios found. Applying principle of accountability (Labov 1972, Tagliamonte 2012, together with test statistic on data drawn from the Nigeria-ICE, we showed that in Nigerian determiner system, grammatical number is likely to agree (98%) with the head noun of the noun phrase than to disagree (2%). Also, the disagreement is mainly influenced by complexity and proficiency. This number irregularity is more likely to occur with the use of quantifier or demonstrative than with indefinite article. We argue that this scenario suggests a manifestation of fossilisation by transferring from the syntactically unique determiner systems of the local Nigerian languages to Nigerian English.

Dative alternation is that sort of construction which requires a choice from two available choices; the double object (DOC) (i. e. Please give Mary the book) and the preposition construction (TOC) (i. e. Please give the book to Mary). Empirical evidence detailing the characteristics and motivations of dative choices in different varieties have been put forward in the literature. Albeit, nothing is known about the nature and motivations of this phenomenon in Nigerian variety of English, an important source of empirical evidence in the English-world-wide paradigm. With 739 sentences extracted from International Corpus of English, we examined the effects of 16 predictors on this construction in the Nigerian variety; showing how the behavior of these predictors compares with findings reported in other varieties. Among other findings, we found that overall Nigerian variety is closer to American variety than Indian variety, and pronominality as the strongest predictor, outweighing register as a reputable predictor.

This paper conducts a corpus-based study of the occurrence/non-occurrence, structural pattern, and forms of the premodifier in the Nigerian English noun phrase, comparing the scenarios that emerge with those of the British and Ghanaian varieties of English. These three phenomena, which are crucial to the nature of premodifier in new varieties of English, are investigated in relation to predictors representing syntactic function, register, post-dependent syntactic weight, and animacy, showing, among other things, the extent to which structural complexity/simplicity is present in the structure of the premodifiers studied. Corpus findings indicate that premodifiers are more likely to occur (53%) than not (47%) and that simple premodifiers (i.e. one-word premodifier structural pattern (79%)) are significantly preferred to complex premodifiers (i.e. two-word at 17% and longer patterns at 4%). Relating to form, single premodifiers are most likely to be realized as adjectives. It is also found that the alternation between simple and complex premodifiers is most strongly predicted by the syntactic functions that the NP performs, as well as the syntactic weight present in the post dependent slot. Register, which is reputed as a very strong indicator of structural variation (Schils and De Haan 1993; Biber et al. 2007; Schilk and Schaub 2016) is outweighed by syntactic function and post-dependent weight.

The present paper discusses the occurrence, structure, and complexity of the postmodifier in the Nigerian English noun phrase (NP) showing tendencies for structural simplification. It also compares its findings with patterns in British, Ghanaian, Singaporean, Honk Kong varieties. The paper shows how variables representing syntactic function, register, and weight shed light on specific contexts where we might or might not find (1) NP with or without a postmodifier (2) a clausal or phrasal postmodifier, and (3) a simple or a complex postmodifier. In addition, the paper shows that the extent of variation among different varieties of English is dependent on variables crucial to the construction choices being investigated. For instance, in (1), a postmodifier is realised while no postmodifier is realised in (2). (1) My car which I just bought last week has been stolen, and (2) My car has been stolen.The NP in (1) is structurally complex because it realises the clausal type of post modifier, ‘which I just bought last week’. Meanwhile in (2), the NP (the car) lacks a postmodifier. In other words, the occurrence viz-a-viz non-occurrence of a postmodifier contributes to the overall structural and semantic complexity of the entire noun phrases, irrespective of the syntactic positions of the NP. Quantitative analyses of 8897 NPs indicate that in Nigerian NPs, a postmodifier is more unlikely to occur (61 %) than not (39 %). Further analyses show that prepositional phrase (57 %), rather than clause (32 %) or adjective (9 %) or adverbials (2 %), is the most preferred structural postmodifier type. It is also shown that realised postmodifiers are more likely to be structured in two-to-four words (51 %) than four-words above. As for the predictive strength of variables studied, syntactic function is found to edge register in asserting influence and explaining different scenarios and contexts where we might or might not find a postmodifier, together with its structural type and weight. In other words, register, which is reputed as a significant indicator of structural variation (Biber, 2007; De Haan, Pieter. 1993. Sentence Length in Running Text. In Souter, C. & E. Atwell (), Corpus-Based Computational Linguistics, 147–161. Amsterdam: Rodopi; Schilk and Schaub, 2016) is outweighed by syntactic function. The study further attests that significant structural simplification is largely present in the postmodifier structure of the Nigerian English noun phrase.