Morphological Features of the South African English of Black South Africans

Abstract

As a result of the contact between British English and the numerous languages and cultures of Africa during the colonial period, many variants of the English language were formed, including the South African version of English. Postcolonial African linguistics has been of interest to Russian scholars in the recent decade. However, despite numerous studies, the specifics of the functioning of the South African version of the English language have not been touched upon.  The purpose of the study is to analyze the morphological features of different word classes in the South African English spoken by black South Africans based on examples from oral speech. The results showed that the morphological variation of the South African version of English is manifested in a deviation from the traditional morphological structure, which is reflected in the following morphological transformation processes: unmarked gender of pronouns, simplification of tense forms of the verb, and omission of articles in the South African version of black South Africans.