Patterns of Pronunciation of Morpheme “– ed” in English News among Yoruba Television Newscasters in Lagos State
The study examined the possible phonological environments that influence the renditions of morpheme ‘-ed’; identified the patterns of the pronunciation of morpheme “– ed” by Yoruba L1 Television Newscasters; and it investigated the level of awareness of phonological rules guiding the articulation of morpheme “ – ed” by Yoruba L1 newscasters. This is with a view to examining the patterns of pronunciation of morpheme ‘-ed’ in English news among Yoruba television newscasters. The study is a descriptive survey; weekly news episodes were recorded from August 2020- March 2021, hence a total of 32 news episodes were collected from each television station. A collection of 25 words that contain morpheme ‘-ed’ and common to the news episodes from all the television stations were selected for analysis with their corresponding number of occurrence. Theoretical insights were drawn from Distinctive Features and Phonological Rules. It was found that the newscasters were aware of the morphophonemic rules but they were not consistent in deploying it. Instead of the three patterns of pronunciation of morpheme ‘-ed’ in the received pronunciation -/t, d, id/, the newscasters had five different patterns -/t, d, id, ed, /. Of all the renditions, /d/ and /ed/ were the commonest ones.
