Introduction

Background

It is generally acknowledged that the duration of the contact between English and West African languages on a sustained basis is essentially coterminous with the colonial era, namely circa 1880–1960 (cf. Kirk-Greene 1971; Angogo and Hancock 1980; Bokamba 1984a). During much of that period and up to the late 1960s English was, as Spencer (1971) notes, an institutional link rather than a community language: It was primarily learned in school and used in educational, administrative, and commercial institutions.

While this institutional character remains largely true today, the development of Sierra Leonean Krio (c. 1800) and that of other more recent Pidgin English varieties (e.g., Cameroonian, Liberian, Nigerian), combined with the phenomenal expansion of pre-university education into rural areas in the 1970s, have significantly extended the domains of English in the region. In particular, established West African Pidgin Englishes have become the link languages par excellence for many communities in the region (cf. Shnukal and Marchese 1983; Jones 1987; Faraclas 1984 and this volume). ‘Educated West African English’ or the variety of English spoken by educated West Africans, has itself assumed an increasingly preponderant role as the intra-African and inter-continental language of communication for the sub-region. In view of these functional roles, it is reasonable to assume that the increased contact between West African languages and English in the past century or so has had important structural effects on the latter.