📖 ABSTRACT/OVERVIEW
This study develops a theoretically grounded account of Nigerian German interlanguage by constructing and analysing a longitudinal learner corpus drawn from undergraduate, Masters, and postgraduate diploma students at five Nigerian universities across the South West, South East, and North Central geopolitical zones. Interlanguage theory, since its foundational articulation in second language acquisition research, has been applied predominantly to European and East Asian learner populations, and a theory of Nigerian German interlanguage that accounts for the unique multilingual substrate, phonological inventory, and pragmatic norms of Nigerian learners has not been developed. The study builds a longitudinal corpus of written and spoken German data spanning three academic years from 300 learners at different proficiency stages. Using corpus annotation tools and mixed-methods analysis, the study identifies systematic developmental trajectories, persistent error types, and emergent learner-specific constructions that characterise Nigerian German interlanguage across proficiency levels. A theorised framework of Nigerian German interlanguage is proposed, incorporating contributions from transfer, developmental sequences, and pragmatic interference dimensions. The framework makes an original theoretical contribution to second language acquisition and provides the empirical foundation for a national diagnostic assessment system for German language learners in Nigeria. The study also advances methodological innovation by establishing the first Nigerian German learner corpus. Keywords: interlanguage theory, Nigerian German, learner corpus, longitudinal study, second language acquisition.
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