Browsing by Author "Hamisi, Amani"

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    The influence of kiswahili in chimalaba: a case of lexical and structural borrowing
    (University of Dar es Salaam, 2010) Hamisi, Amani
    This study addresses the influence of Kiswahili in Chimalaba through lexical and structural borrowing. It seeks to investigate and identify lexical and structural items borrowed from Kiswahili into Chimalaba, to discover phonological and morphological strategies that Chimalaba uses to assimilate borrowed items into its system. It also tries to find out and identify language changes in Chimalaba due to lexical and structural borrowing from Kiswahili. The approach used in this study is based on Assimilation theory. According to this theory, when speakers borrow words from another language, they tend to assimilate them to phonological, morphological and syntactic habits of their own languages. The results show that Chimalaba has been heavily influenced by Kiswahili. There are a lot of lexical and structural features in Chimalaba which have been borrowed from Kiswahili. There are phonological and morphological strategies used to integrate borrowed items into Chimalaba. Also there are language changes in Chimalaba at the level of phonology, morphology, morphosyntax and in the lexicon. Although Chimalaba has changed in various ways by those borrowed features, various sub-systems such as phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics remain intact and they are basically of Chimakonde. The study also reveals that social factors, especially long-term contact with Kiswahili and high bilingualism, are primary determinant of linguistic borrowing in Chimalaba. It is recommended in this study that there is a need to conduct a study to investigate the influence of Kiswahili in Chimalaba focusing on syntactic aspects of sentential components (such as phrase distribution, subordination and word order), semantics, stylistics and pragmatics to see if structural borrowing is extended to these aspects.