The handling of Morphological structures in Bantu lexicography: the case of Orunyambo Compound Wards

This study attempts the analysis of the morphology of compounds in Orunyambo. Data for the study were collected through questionnaires, interviews and documentary reviews. The population sample consisted of forty respondents who live in the Abhanyambo community and speak Orunyambo as their mother tongue. Respondents were categorised into two age groups: those from 30 to 70 years, and those from 70 years and above. The collected data were then analysed based on morphological and lexicographical approaches. The study employed the Comprehensive Theory of Lexicography approach, advocated by Herbert Ernest Wiegand (1977). The findings reveal that there are both simple and complex compounds in Orunyambo. Simple compounds have many constituents and their meanings are difficult to figure them out. Orunyambo compounds have several morphological patterns or combinations such as noun +noun; noun+ adjective; and verb +noun. Furthermore, the compounds were tested against some lexicographical methods of entering them as dictionary entries and the results proved that the methods of alphabetization, separate entry, no separate entry and separate entry with cross-referencing raise some challenges such as producing unnatural forms and forms which are not lexical items but phrases. Other results are clustering of headwords into fewer letters and retrieval difficulties on the part of users. Most of these problems are due to the complex nature of Bantu language compounds. These do not conform to the Western Lexicographical Design. To solve these problems, several alternative methods have been proposed in this study.