“You're not staying in Island sha o”: O, sha and abi as pragmatic markers in Nigerian English

This paper investigates three pragmatic markers which hitherto have not been discussed in Nigerian English. It examines the meaning, grammatical properties and discourse-pragmatic functions of these pragmatic markers: o, sha and abi in the International Corpus of English-Nigeria, from a grammatical-pragmatic approach. The results reveal that o is an emphasis marker and a mitigation marker, sha is a discourse marker, an attention marker and a mitigation marker while abi occurs as a discourse marker and as an agreement marker. The three markers are syntactically optional; they mostly occupy the clause-final position and are mainly found in informal talks. While o is derived from various Nigerian indigenous languages including Yoruba, Igbo and Ishan, sha and abi are borrowed from Yoruba. The paper concludes that o may be a likely candidate for inclusion in Standard Nigerian English, due to its frequency, distribution and functions in Nigerian English.