“Someone has been coronated” Nigerian English lexical innovations in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract This sociolinguistic study explores lexical innovations and variation in the lexemes of Nigerian English formed during the COVID-19Pandemic. The emergence and spread of the virus have significantly altered the societal norm to becoming what is called the new normal. The Nigerian linguistic landscape is not spared from the impact caused by the virus. Some new words peculiar to Covid-19 have been introduced into the day to day use of Nigerian English (NE) in some sectors of the society, such as education, social media, health, religion, and markets. There have also been lexical innovations as well as variations in the use of these vocabularies. Using the variationist model, this research investigates these COVID-19 vocabularies and how factors such as region, class, and situational contexts bring about linguistic variations in daily use. In doing this, it identifies and compiles the lexemes as being used and also describes their contextual usages in Nigerian English. This study adopts a descriptive survey design and collects data using questionnaires from two hundred Nigerian English speakers in SouthwestNigeria. The research shows that NE speakers use diverse morphological processes to create new lexemes based on the COVID-19 context. It also produces a COVID-19 vocabulary corpus that reveals Nigerian speakers’ linguistic and innovative ability of the English language and the effect of social experiences on language use. It will also help provide the correct contextual meanings of the new words related to COVID-19.


PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
"Heath is wealth", so goes the age-long adage. Therefore, this study is of immense interest to all and sundry considering the devastating effect the COVID 19 pandemic has on our world. Apart from the biocidal effect of the virus, it has also precipitated serious socio-economic fallouts that nations are still grappling with. One of such repercussions is the change to language use occasioned by the experiences of Yoruba speakers of the English language with the pandemic. The study interrogated the new words formed by the Yoruba speakers of Nigerian English with respect to Covid-19 to establish that social changes, particularly health-related ones, can disrupt the normal patterns in public life, not sparing language use.

Introduction
The emergence and spread of COVID-19 have significantly altered the societal norm to becoming what is called the "new normal" (Thontteh & Olanrele, 2020). Hence, new policies put in place make the standard of living evolve by the day (Haleem et al., 2020). This situation, which has globally affected the world populace (Vitenu-Sackey & Barfi, 2021), has engendered the introduction of new vocabulary into languages of the world (Tan et al., 2020), including the Nigerian variety of English to help cope with this new reality. Research on the linguistic innovations originating from the COVID-19 Pandemic has begun as the Oxford English Dictionary has already started its documentation of novel and conventional words that have experienced semantic extensions during the Pandemic (Paton, 2020). Thus, it is imperative to investigate lexical innovations peculiar to Nigerian experiences, which have expanded the Nigerian English vocabulary due to the COVID-19 Pandemic-some of which are generic to native and non-native English language varieties. These innovations also include some that are peculiar to Nigerian South-Western speakers of Nigerian English.
Recent research in the Oxford English Dictionary reveals that lexicographers often link linguistic change to social change because it has been a consistent effect of changes in the mechanisms of social structures (Paton, 2020). Maybaum (2013) discusses language change and innovation as products of social processes; thus, the investigation into linguistic innovations has been a central concern in sociolinguistics since its inception (Wei, 2020). However, linguistic innovation, which refers to the addition of new phenomena to a language and regional-based lexical innovation, which is the crux of this research, has primarily been under-researched (Grieve et al., 2018). Linguistic innovation studies are rare among non-native varieties of English; most researchers focus the few available studies on varieties of English in the inner circle (Udom, 2013). These innovations cut across the linguistic levels; syntactic, lexical, semantic, morphological, amongst others and can be linked to diverse social factors. Such factors peculiar to non-native varieties include socio-cultural experiences, sociolinguistic settings, and various situational contexts. Despite that linguistic innovation happens recurrently, research reveals little on the formation and use of linguistic innovations (Britain, 2012). Grieve et al. (2018) find that lexical innovations in an American Twitter corpus are generated based on general cultural trends, music, non-native American Englishes, and social factors such as migration. A few linguists have examined linguistic innovation in Nigerian English (NE) (Igboanusi, 2006) and fewer still socially-induced linguistic innovations (Udom, 2013). These have found that speakers of this variety employ peculiar nonnative linguistic processes in the generation of lexis and syntactic conventions, some of which are common to West African Englishes. Although it is apparent that linguistic innovation occurs in the NE variety, little information is available on the factors that effectuate these innovations.
Thus, this paper examines lexical innovations among South-Western speakers of Nigerian English in the COVID-19Pandemic. The study aims to investigate, compile and analyse the corpus of NE vocabulary related to the COVID-19 Pandemic. It also examines how this unforeseen social process has influenced the lexicon of South-Western speakers of NE. It further interrogates how social class and situational contexts bring about variation in the use of identified Covid-19 vocabularies. Finally, it answers the following research questions: (i) How has the COVID-19Pandemic influenced the lexicon of South-Western speakers of NE? (ii) How do social class and situational context bring about variation in identified linguistic innovations?

Nigerian English
Nigerian English is the variety of English spoken among Nigerians. This variety of English which is perpetually present in sociolinguistic discourse among Nigerian linguists is described by Jowitt (2019:1) as "English as used by Nigerians." It encompasses the use of English across linguistic levels and the domestication in the use of English by Nigerians to meet their daily linguistic needs. The study of Nigerian English use spans various linguistic characteristics; linguists have investigated its sound system (Awonusi, 2008;Jowitt, 2000;Okoro, 2017;Oladipupo & Akinjobi, 2015), lexico-semantics (Ajewole, 2013;Kaan et al., 2013;Okunrinmeta, 2014;Opara, 2016), syntax (Lawal, 2013) and discourse (Awonusi, 1998).
Various linguists have stressed the presence and need for a standardised variety of Nigerian English, making many cases for this (Ifesieh, 2016). In line with this ideology, there is a Standardise Nigerian English Movement (SNEM) whose main aim is to promote the NE and ensure that it gets its international recognition because its distinctive usages mark it different from World Englishes. However, to date, there is no published or official document that identifies or distinguishes the standard from the non-standard variety of Nigerian English despite its continued use and the current categorisation of Nigeria as one of the world's biggest English-speaking countries (Jowitt, 2019). Oyebola and Gut (2021) investigate the possibility of Nigerian Newscasters English occupying the standard English variety in Nigeria. However, findings reveal that NE speakers tend to favour British English, which still maintains an overarching presence in the Nigerian linguistic landscape over the English of Nigerian Newscasters. Although much work needs to be done to achieve a standardised variety, scholars highlight the presence of varieties of Nigerian English according to regions (Urhobo English, Yoruba English, Hausa English etc.), education (Educated Nigerian English), and sociolinguistic parameters (Surakat, 2010) and these have been widely studied.

Nigerian English lexis
The lexis of Nigerian English, which is rapidly expanding (Ajewole, 2013), has constantly been the focus of NE research. This is due to its continued expansion, inability to entirely capture diverse social and linguistic experiences, its adaptation to the Nigerian experience, and its ineptness to entirely cover the communicative needs of Nigerians (Abel et al., 2016;Udom, 2013). The inexhaustible lexis of NE is the product of alphabetically arranged lexicons, glossaries, and mini-dictionaries. They have been developed via a plethora of morphological processes that have been identified over time by scholars (Adegbija, 2004Bamiro, 1994). These processes include transfer', "analogy", "acronyms", "semantic shift or extension", "coinages and neologisms", "reduplication/ redundancy", "ellipsis", "conversion", "clipping", 'under differentiation "hybridization" and "affixation".
More concisely, Jowitt (2019) discusses these processes under two headings; major and minor (see Figure 1). He describes the "major" as comprising those processes commonly used in the innovation of NE lexis and minor as consisting of the ones used intermittently.
Lexical innovation, which is the centre of this research, has scarcely been studied among nonnative varieties (Wei, 2020). In NE, it is linked to the creative ability of Nigerians to define their sociocultural experiences through the formation of new words in the English language. The ideology of creativity related to lexical innovations has been extensively questioned and criticised as not being "internationally intelligible" by NE researchers in the past (Bamgbose, 1995;Thomas, 1991). However, Udom (2007) states that linguistic innovations, especially in NE, allow its speakers to reflect their localised socio-cultural experiences. Wei (2020) also affirms this in a study on Singaporean English. He concludes that non-native linguistic innovations in this variety can be analysed socio-politically because speakers of this variety tend to create linguistic innovations based on their daily sociopolitical experiences. Udom (2013) defines lexical innovation in the context of the NE as "new words coined to reflect and interpret Nigerian culture, people and way of life . . . these newfound words qualify as acceptable language usage in education" (p. 48). Aside from the morphological processes used to create new lexis in NE identified above, Udom (2013) also discusses denominalisation, argument or qualia structures, polysemy, and type coercion as word creation processes in NE. This study is guided by the variationist theory proposed by Labov (1972), which investigates how social factors engender linguistic differences resulting in linguistic variation. Linguistic variation can be geographical, social, or contextual. Geographical is concerned with variation based on the speakers' location. Social has to do with variation according to age, class, occupation, sex, education, etc. Contextual is a variation of language depending on the speaker's context, e.g., formal or informal. This study examines a regional variety of NE, South-Western speakers of NE, and further investigates social and contextual lexical variation.
Many previous studies have taken a variationist approach to the study of lexis in different varieties of English. They have found that various social factors play a role in lexical choices. These include gender, regional, social, contextual, onomasiological and semasiological factors (see Grieve et al., 2018;Njuguna, 2018).
Scholars have also examined lexical variation in the use of NE Mgbemena, 2015) but have not attended to socially-induced innovations or variations which are central to this study. In addition to these studies, this current study investigates lexical variation in a regional variety of NE during the COVID-19Pandemic.

Methodology
The study adopted the descriptive survey design. This design was deemed appropriate for the research as it helped gather required information among targeted different components in the society. A questionnaire was used to collect data for the study to achieve the stated aims. The questionnaire had 16 items soliciting information about respondents' bio-data, educational status, social media status, level of Covid-19 awareness, as well as new lexemes they could have come across about Covid-19 with options for them to tick appropriately. Using convenience sampling technique, 200 samples were randomly identified and selected across a typical heterogeneous society comprising students, the employed, the unemployed, the self-employed, females and males in the South-Western part of Nigeria. The instrument was designed using Google Forms. It was administered via various social media for educated participants and in remote locations, and by hand, for the uneducated and within reach of the researchers. Out of the 200 samples, 182 returned copies of the questionnaire through the same means. Responses were analysed using SPSS to describe the Covid-19 lexemes and their contextual usages in Nigerian English.

Results
The results of the analysis are presented in three sections, namely: (i) demography, (ii) Covid-19 lexemes and social class, and (iii) Covid-19 lexical innovations.

Personal characteristics
A total of 182 participants responded to the questionnaire for the study, and their demographics are presented (see Table 1).   Table 2 reveals that about 53% of the respondents were employed, and most of them were educated, with a majority having bachelor's (39.0%) and masters (33.5%) degrees.

Covid-19 lexemes and social class
Lexemes used for Covid-19 among the less educated (primary, secondary and NCE) and uneducated are presented in Figure 2, while those used among the highly educated (bachelor, master and PhD) are shown in Figure 3. Figure 2 reveals that the less and uneducated speakers of Nigerian English use highly localised or nativised terms when naming the virus. The terms above show that they use one major morphological process-loanwords-when referring to the Covid-19virus. The Oxford Dictionary defines a loanword as "a word adopted from a foreign language with little or no modification." Such new lexemes regarded as loanwords given by respondents for coronavirus are: won ti ko (they have contacted it); aisanolowo (sickness of the rich); aarungbajumo (illness of celebrities); ajakaleaarun Pandemic); aisanigbalode (trendy sickness); ibalile (acute fever); ile tutu (cold); kogbogun (defies medication). The semantics of the words showed that occasions and situations that arose from the Pandemic determined respondents' choice of words for the coronavirus, and because they have limited knowledge of English, they expressed their experiences in the Yorùbá language. Also worthy of note are the mispronunciations in Figure 2, e.g., Koronabiros, kolobia virus, Colonia birus etc., that occurs among this category of NE speakers when referring to the virus. These forms are inappropriate pronunciations due to pronouncing the English words with their native tongues or their social status (i.e. level education). Figure 3 is a cloud of words used among the educated respondents to the survey. The figure shows that highly educated speakers of Nigerian English use more sophisticated terms in naming the virus. Although the results reveal the creation of some new words in referring to the virus such as Chinese virus/disease, Killer virus, terminal disease abbreviated forms such as the 'vid, C19 and personalisd terms such as Rona, Aunty Rona, they tend to use terms closer to what is obtainable among the global English language speakers (see Table 3). Hence, this study affirms thatOdumuh's (1984) advocacy for the Educated Nigerian English should be championed as a model for Standard Nigerian English.

Covid-19 lexical innovations
The global scourge of the COVID-19 virus has engendered the introduction of new lexemes into the English language generally, and as identified in the introductory section of this writeup, these novel words are being documented in the Oxford English Dictionary. These words are not only common in the daily communications of Standard Englishes but also World Englishes, and NE is not left out (see Table 3). It is essential to state that the list of COVID-19 lexemes presented in Table 3 is not exhaustive as the vocabulary keeps growing.
Most of these words, as identified, are commonly used in the English language; however, some are unique to the Nigerian English vocabulary or Standard Nigerian English vocabulary (see Table  4). These words were coined purposely to reflect the Nigerian experience in the face of the Pandemic, and their meanings are localised in the NE variety.
More specifically and in line with the objectives of this study, the COVID-19Pandemic has witnessed the infusion of lexical innovations to a regional variety of Nigerian English -Yorùbá-English. This regional variety has coined new lexemes in response to diverse situational contexts during the COVID-19Pandemic (see Figure 4). Figure 4 reveals that respondents selected within the society have different processes of linguistic innovations for vocabulary development, especially concerning the Covid −19 pandemic. Following Jowitt's (2019) classification of the methods used in creating NE vocabulary, results from this study show that both the major and minor processes are employed in the innovation of Covid-19 lexemes at the lexico-semantic level. Yorùbá English speakers of NE utilise the three primary methods (coinage, extension (of meaning) and transfer), categorised as incessantly used processes in NE word formation, and two minor processes (blending and clipping) used from time to time. There are also grammatical processes of innovation used at the syntactic level comprising nominalisation, verbalisation, contraction, spelling, and compounding.

Analysis of morphological processes in lexical innovations of Covid-19 lexemes
This section presents a detailed analysis of the morphological processes employed in creating lexical innovations of Covid-19 lexemes among South-Western speakers of NE. It addresses these in two broad divisions; the lexico-semantic and morpho-syntactic levels. The former presents the discussion under five sections: coinages, transfer, semantic shifts, clipping and blending, while the latter is discussed holistically.

Coinages
Though similar to loanwords, coinages function as a colloquialism spoken in English with a unique cultural meaning. They are identified as new terms created for new experiences, especially where speakers of the language do not have adequate words to express themselves or satisfy their immediate environment's communicative purpose. Such coinages result from interference or transfer of traits from speakers' first language to the target language. As identified by Jowitt (2019), these coinages are either new words or new collocations. New words introduced to NE due to the Covid-19 Pandemic include coro, rona, coronise, coromental, cofid, corocious and coronated. Collocations include mask up, isolation centre, palliative foodstuff, corona party, coro food, coro uniform etc. Findings reveal that respondents coin new words from the existing terms for the virus, e.g., covid from Covid-19, rona and coro from corona. Also, coronize, coromental and coronated are all coinages from coronavirus and covid-19.

Transfer
As identified by Adetuyi (2011), transfer could occur in the following forms: transfer of meaning, transfer of culture, transfer of context, and transfer of Nigerian pidgin features. Jowitt (2019) also highlights loan words and translations as types of transfers predominantly used to form NE lexemes. Examples of loanwords given by respondents for coronavirus are: won ti ko (they have contacted it); aisanolowo (sickness of the rich); aarungbajumo (illness of the famous); ajakaleaarunPandemic); aisanigbalode (trendy sickness); ibalile (acute fever); ile tutu (cold); kogbogun (defies medication). This study also shows that transfer of meaning predominantly occurred where respondents referred to covid-19 as social distancing, isolation, isolation centre, palliative, and quarantine. Although these words are closely related to Covid-19, they do not necessarily have the meaning of what the coronavirus entails.

Semantic shifts
These are the extensions of the meaning of English words for Nigerian purposes and uses. In these cases, the original English meanings are shifted, restricted, or extended. E.g. corowona (has no money to spend-the unavailability of funds due to the lockdown crumbled many businesses.) Other examples include corolabi (we have given birth to a baby during the coronavirus pandemic); corogbemi (coronavirus has benefited me); coro food (food received at the period of the covid-19 lockdown as a form of palliative); corobiyi (corona birthed this, not necessarily a baby, it could also be chaos). Others include owocoro (funds released by the government and corporate bodies to assist people during the Pandemic); koro o gbagbere (the sickness is not a joke); obanicoro, erucovid (coronavirus is king; the fear of covid -due to the threatening manner the virus operates, it is revered). The original meaning of the virus has been far extended and, in some cases, completely shifted from the original meaning with the lexemes analysed here. Respondents expressed their different experiences from the Covid-19Pandemic through the words used to refer to the Pandemic.

Clipping
The final clipping is a common type used in the English language, and it is applied to the word "corona" to achieve the shortened form "coro"-a term used to name the covid-19 virus that cuts across the social classes of NE speakers. This abbreviated form is used in sentences such as This coro is severe and widely understood to mean the virus. It serves as a stem in many lexical innovations identified in Figure 4, such as corogbemi, coromuyiwa etc.

Blending
This morphological process is concerned with the fusion of English and indigenous words to derive a new word. Figure 4 reveals that Yorùbá-English speakers of NE blend the shortened form "coro" with words from the Yorùbá language to create new words. Examples include ounjecoro (food shared as palliative during the covid-19 lockdown, owocoro (funds released by the government and corporate bodies to assist people during the Pandemic) etc. There are also cases of blending with the word "covid", for instance, erucovid (goods gotten from covid).

Morpho-syntactic level
The syntactic processes in respondents' innovation of covid-19 lexemes observed in this study arose from the sociolinguistic setting of Nigeria comprising the indigenous languages and the Pidgin English. Such syntactic processes as found in the data include reduplication (for emphasis or pluralisation in the Nigerian context), e.g., corocoro; verbalisation (derive verbs from nouns), e.g. coronated, coronize, koronize, corolised; nominalisation (converting another part of speech into a noun), e.g., coronation, also, converting nouns into adverbs, e.g., coronically.
At the spelling level, the data revealed that the orthography of their L1 was intruding into that of English. So, we have spellings such as koro, koronize, cofid, covit, and colonial vilus. The foregone indicates substituting letters or alphabets in L2 that are not available or sound differently in L1 with similar alphabet. Furthermore, instances of contraction by respondents, such as 'vid in place of Covid-19, Rona in place of the corona, and C19 instead of Covid-19 as well as humanising the coronavirus by the respondents, e.g., Miss Rona/Aunty Rona existed among the respondents.

Discussion
The findings of this study establish that there are reactions and responses to pandemics that can be investigated in multi-levels of research. It reveals the level of awareness and knowledge of the Covid-19Pandemic and its effect among Nigerians and the NE. It ascertains that South-Western speakers of NE are aware of the coronavirus and its impact on society, as evident in their use of language. Since they are aware, preventing its spread among the Nigerian populace may not be a significant challenge for the government both at the national and international levels. It further establishes that the effect of pandemics is not limited to threats capable of disrupting the conventional ways of doing things but also leave giant prints on other social constructs in society, including language. The study confirms that the morphological processes presented by Jowitt (2019) were utilised in the creation of Covid-19 lexemes by the NE speakers.
The low level of internet penetration limited this study among the rural population in Southwest Nigeria. The outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic imposed the need for social/physical distancing and restriction of movements. Therefore, communication depends mainly on the internet and its applications beyond the reach of many rural communities in developing countries, including Nigeria. The survey was distributed via online platforms; therefore, only the educated respondents participated more which explains the small size of the respondents.
Similarly, the introduction of physical and social distancing to curb the spread of the virus also hindered the researchers from following up on the respondents to improve participation and proper completion of the questionnaire. There were cases of inter as well as intra state travel bans which also limited the research process. Nevertheless, this study may serve as a model for investigating the reactions and responses to pandemics among non-native English speakers in other nations of the world. It could be replicated elsewhere to measure the sociolinguistic prowess of the communities affected by infectious diseases such as Ebola and Lassa Fever in some African countries. Researchers could also examine the linguistic effect of the Pandemic among the locals in India, China and other developing and developed countries.

Conclusion
This study discovered that the Covid-19 Pandemic significantly influences Nigerian English, especially among the Yoruba speakers, irrespective of their social and educational status. It succeeded to compile a list of common standard terms used globally to describe Covid-19, which were used to benchmark the ones formed by the NE speakers (educated and uneducated). Although it found several new words created by Yoruba-English speakers, including coro, coromuyiwa, corowolo, etc., none relate to the standard terms in pronunciation or orthography. This implies that the vocabularies of the Covid-19 are differently conceived by different societies depending on social status and experiences. It shows that Nigerians can create new words for new phenomena as reflected in Udom (2007). It finds that although most of the global Covid-19 vocabularies belong to the acrolectal class (those using the standard variety), which also plays out among the Educated NE speakers, the basilectal (those using the non-standard variety of NE) class have also created their vocabulary by using localised terms to define their experiences.
This study recommends that further sociolinguistic studies should be conducted to examine variation of these new lexemes with other social factors-especially age.