Abstract
This article shows both the contact of English and Kiswahili with Datooga and how noun loans from the two languages are nativized in Datooga. Through elicitation, extraction from oral narrations and reviewing existing documents, English and Kiswahili noun loans were identified in Datooga. The article shows that, regardless of their source, loanwords from the two languages are all integrated into the Datooga noun structure in a uniform way. Phonologically, the loanwords are nativized through replacement of foreign sound with a native sound that has almost similar features in the recipient language, voicing of foreign sounds, vowel heightening and the change of the quality of the final vowel into a whispered one. Morphologically, the nativized nouns are treated like other non-prototypical Datooga nouns, where the primary forms of the nouns become the most used and occurring forms of the nouns. As a result of number and definite marking, the borrowed nouns give rise to the ternary opposition in number/definite marking. Semantically, the borrowed nouns are nativized using the -ajɛɛ- formative. The loanwords have been integrated into the Datooga gender based on their semantics. Further semantic broadening and semantic shift are some of the changes in meaning observed.
Recommended Citation
Michael, Kuria Mdoe
(2023)
"The Integration of Nouns from English and Kiswahili Into the Grammar of Datooga Language Spoken in Tanzania,"
Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences: Vol. 12
:
No.
1
, Article 2.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.56279/jhss.v12i1/3