Abstract A comprehensive corpus-driven account of the internal structure, meaning and interpretation of relative clauses in Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE) is missing in the literature. Relativisation, including its process, strategies, constraints, structural patterning, meaning and interpretation, is an important syntactic structure in any language, and therefore is crucial to our understanding of the extent to which syntactic and semantic structures in NPE differ from standard varieties of English. Relying on corpus material extracted from a popular web media outlet BBC News Pidgin, the study shows that user/speakers of NPE are cognitively enabled and creative in varying relative clauses along simple and complex choices and that structural and semantic complexities operative in the relativisation process in NPE are not too different from standard Englishes. Unlike in standard English where relativisers who and which clearly relate to the animacy of the relativised NP, relativiser representing wey, which can be classified as a prototype for relativisers weh, wen, and wia, does not clearly make such distinction. Also, it is shown that wey embodies the syntactic and semantic properties of these other relativisers, a phenomenon classified as relativiser reduction.

中文翻译：

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WEY和尼日利亚洋泾浜英语关系从句结构

摘要 文献中缺少对尼日利亚洋泾浜英语 (NPE) 中关系从句的内部结构、含义和解释的综合语料库驱动的描述。相对化，包括其过程、策略、约束、结构模式、意义和解释，是任何语言中重要的句法结构，因此对于我们理解 NPE 中的句法和语义结构与标准英语变体的差异程度至关重要. 依靠从流行的网络媒体 BBC News Pidgin 中提取的语料库材料，该研究表明，NPE 的使用者/说话者在简单和复杂的选择中具有认知能力和创造性，并且在 NPE 的相对化过程中运行的结构和语义复杂性与标准英语没有太大区别。与标准英语中明显与相对化 NP 的活力相关的相对词不同，代表 wey 的相对词（可归类为相对词 weh、wen 和 wia 的原型）没有明确区分。此外，还表明 wey 体现了这些其他相对词的句法和语义特性，这种现象被归类为相对词减少。可以归类为相对论者 weh、wen 和 wia 的原型，并没有明确区分。此外，还表明 wey 体现了这些其他相对词的句法和语义特性，这种现象被归类为相对词减少。可以归类为相对论者 weh、wen 和 wia 的原型，并没有明确区分。此外，还表明 wey 体现了这些其他相对词的句法和语义特性，这种现象被归类为相对词减少。