The Effect of Dholuo on Lunyore: a Case of Lexical Borrowing

Abstract

This study endeavored to investigate the effect of lexical borrowing from Dholuo to Lunyore. It focused its attention on identifying and classifying the borrowed lexical material into their appropriate lexical categories, determining any semantic change experienced and narrowed down to the investigation of the processes by which these borrowed lexical items are nativised in Lunyore and attempted an explanation whether these words retain their original meaning from Dholuo or semantically shift. It further determined the possible existence of socio-cultural, economic and psychological factors responsible for this continuous word borrowing phenomenon. In a bid to accomplish this task, the researcher ventured into the collection of data which was made up of a carefully collected and categorized inventory of words of Dholuo origin that are in common use in Lunyore. They were captured from a variety of verbal interaction situations contextualized according to the physical environment, socio-cultural settings, socio-economic settings, material culture and formally planned settings among others. This study employed the theoretical framework of a Cognitive approach to Lexical semantics, that is, the Cognitive Lexical Semantics Theory in the classification, analysis, discussion and making of conclusions on the data collected. This data was collected through participatory observation facilitated by actual interaction with Lunyore native speakers in everyday conservations in a variety of social settings, listening to vernacular radio stations and use of purposeful interviews with informants. It was discovered that the lexical items borrowed from Dholuo into Lunyore belonged to six (6) lexical or grammatical categories namely: nominal lexical items, verbal lexical items, adjectival lexical items, adverbs, exclamatives or interjections and conjunctions; and idiomatic expressions. Methods and mechanisms used in the borrowing and nativisation of the loanwords were four: direct loans, loan translations, loan shifts and clipping. In addition to this, instances and types of semantic change were identified, exemplified and discussed. They were four types: zero semantic change, semantic broadening, semantic narrowing and meaning shift. The socio-cultural, socio-economic and psychological factors responsible for this word borrowing such as language contact itself, intermarriages, religion, business and trade and casual labor and evident instances of semantic shift were identified and candidly discussed. Conclusions made from these discussions were used to authoritatively comment on the overall effect that Dholuo has caused and still does on Lunyore as seen in lexical borrowing and subsequent semantic change. For instance, Lunyore was discovered to have relatively increased its lexicon and still went on as the borrowing process continuous. It was also concluded that there was a likelihood of the Lunyore dialect losing or weakening its identity and intelligibility among its sister dialects of Luhya language. It was also concluded that the other likely effect of this process was that a new regionally based Lunyore related dialect of Luhya could be realized over time since word borrowing and semantic change was a continuous linguistic phenomenon.