ABSTRACT
The thesis entitled “A Morphological Analysis of Loan Words among
Yoruba Speakers of English in Kaduna Metropolis” is a documentation and
analysis of some English, Hausa and Arabic loan words in Yoruba
language. The study is propelled by the following observations: that a
large part of the vocabulary of the Yoruba Language are loan words from
other languages particularly the English, Hausa and Arabic languages due
to language contact in a heterogeneous society, that these loan words
are basically as a result of the need for new designations and identity
and that these loan words have been domesticated and are generally used
by the Yoruba speakers according to their profession, religion and even
their level of literacy in Kaduna metropolis. The work therefore, finds
out the extent to which language contact through Urbanisation has
influenced loaning of words and how some words have been integrated into
the vocabulary of the speakers and hence give some forms of identity.
The source of data for the research is primary source which involves the
participant observation method and tape recording of utterance. The
researcher discovered that there are very many English, Hausa and Arabic
loan words in the Yoruba language and that in the course of integrating
these loan words, they (the loan words) experienced adjustment in line
with the morphophonemic rules of the Yoruba Language. This study will
help to understand the learning problems of students of English
Language, teach Yoruba speakers of English better and how the issue of
inter language and hence inter lingual errors or even errors arising
from interference can be tackled.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Many children born in Nigerian urban areas are exposed to two to
more languages because of the heterogeneous nature of the cities/towns.
One of such languages is the language of the environment; the other may
be their mother tongue L1, English language which is the official
language of the country and bits of Arabic language which is the
language of Islam. That is if Islam is one of the predominant religions
in the metropolis.
Kaduna metropolis used by the researcher as the scope is a
cosmopolitan city and hence heterogeneous in nature. This influences
language use among the speakers in the metropolis due to the contact of
different languages. A child born in this environment is exposed to a
minimum of two other languages aside his mother tongue. They include
Hausa (language of the environment) and English language (official
language of the nation and medium of instruction) and Arabic used for
worship among the Muslim faithful.
Language contact occurs in a variety of phenomena which include
language convergence, and re-lexification, other products include:
pidgin, creoles, code-switching, code-mixing etc. Banjo, (1983), Madaki,
(1983), Pariola (1983) in Olaoye (1991), also state that, when
languages come into contact, a variety of phenomena take place which are
bilingualism, borrowing, re-
lexification, code-switching, code-mixing and perhaps language death.