This work documents the results and findings obtained from a series of
sociolinguistic investigations conducted in the speech communities of
Bache and Pan, located respectively in Bassa and Quan-Pan Local
Government Areas of Plateau State, Nigeria. In broad outline, it was
aimed at highlighting some salient features of the dialectological
ecology in these two language communities. In specific terms, it sought
to determine and to assess the degree of mutual intelligibility and
intercomprehension existing between a numbers of dialectal variants
previously reported within these two communities. Utilizing such key
research instruments as Lexicostatistical Wordlists (LW), Recorded Text
Testing (RTT) materials and equipment, written sociolinguistic
questionnaires and verbal interview checklists, the study collected data
concerning reported and tested levels of dialect intercomprehension,
language use in both public and private domains, language attitudes
toward both written and oral speech forms of Bache and Pan, reported
levels of bilingualism in various languages, as well as education and
literacy levels. Considerable amounts of sociolinguistic data were
generated and results subsequently collated for each of the
above-mentioned categories, with emphasis on approximate levels of
dialect intelligibility and intercomprehension as well as associated
level of community attitudes and interest in overall literacy and
language development. Through careful scrutiny and statistical
computations of percentages of lexical similarity and empirical testing
and assessment of dialect intercomprehension amongst sampled field
respondents, the study data and results showed that the four variants of
Bache investigated sufficiently met conventional lexicostatistical and
dialect intelligibility criteria to be considered as viable members of a
single consolidated language entity. The findings from the four
dialectal variants of Pan investigated also revealed that they were, to
varying degrees, mutually intelligible to one another. The study results
also do not reveal any far-reaching evidence of language shift towards
other languages within the immediate sociocultural environments.
Finally, attitudes toward the future developmental prospects of both
Bache and Pan were also generally observed to be relatively strong and
positive, in spite of the natural advent of modern cultural values and
practices within many ethno-linguistic communities in Plateau State in
particular and Nigeria in general