This paper is a study of the English of Olaudah Equiano. His autobiography, published in 1789, was the first book written in English by a Nigerian. It tells how, sold when a boy into slavery and transported to the Caribbean, he later purchased his freedom, settled in England, and became a prominent abolitionist. Literary English of the late eighteenth century adhered to neo-classical models, with complex sentences and a Latinate vocabulary, and these features are much in evidence in Equiano's writing. The principal focus of the paper is on his use of tenses, especially the present perfect, which in Equiano's day was used much as it is now; but he sometimes uses it in ways that are difficult to account for. Thus his mastery of the language was not flawless; but the flaws do not compromise the literary merits of the work or impede our understanding of it.

中文翻译：

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Equiano 旅行的方方面面，18 世纪晚期英国尼日利亚人的自传

本文是对 Olaudah Equiano 英语的研究。他的自传于 1789 年出版，是尼日利亚人用英语写的第一本书。它讲述了当一个男孩被卖为奴隶并被运送到加勒比海时，他后来如何获得自由，在英格兰定居，并成为著名的废奴主义者。十八世纪后期的文学英语遵循新古典主义模式，具有复杂的句子和拉丁语词汇，这些特征在埃奎亚诺的作品中得到了充分体现。这篇论文的主要重点是他对时态的使用，尤其是现在完成时，在埃奎亚诺的时代，它的使用和现在一样多；但他有时会以难以解释的方式使用它。因此，他对语言的掌握并非完美无缺。