Town The copyright of this thesis rests with the University of Cape Town. No quotation from it or information derivedCape from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of theof source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non-commercial research purposes only. University University of Cape Town A Comparative study of the Morphosyntax and Phonetics of Town Bemba and Standard Bemba of the Copperbelt, Zambia Moonde Kabinga February 2010 Town Cape SupervisedOf by Professor Rajend Mesthrie Presented to Universitythe Graduate Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Cape Town In Partial Fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Linguistics. DECLARATION This work has not been previously submitted in whole, or in part, for the award of any degree. It is my own work. Each significant contribution to, and quotation in, this dissertation from the work, or works, of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced. Signature: ____________________ Date: ____________________ Town Cape Of University i ABSTRACT For many years now, the status of Town Bemba (TB) has been fuzzy in its descriptions, as no specific framework has been used in characterising the language variety. TB has been regarded as an urban variety spoken in the townships of the Copperbelt province, Zambia. It had also been perceived as a „secret language‟ or „mixed jargon‟ used by male migrant workers on the mine, but today, it is used by males and females across the board, and also tends to be used as first language (L1) for offspring raised there. This research attempts to investigate the status of TB. It will also make observations of any significant differences between TB and Standard Bemba (SB) through linguistic markers and style of speech by the informants. The comparative analysis will help in assessing the extent to which TB has deviated from SB. The data for morphosyntax, socio-phonetic and lexical analysesTown was collected through one-on-one interviews and two TB music lyrics. Twenty speakers of TB and SB were interviewed in this research. For data analysis three theoretical frameworks were used namely; Myers-Scotton‟s Matrix Language Frame CapeModel (MLF) for the morphosyntax data; socio-phonetics using Praat and NormalisationOf of vowels for phonetic data; and a linguistic characterisation of language varieties were used to characterise TB and establish its status. The results show that TB is quite similar to the base language SB and exemplifies general characteristics that are more similar to Tsotsitaal. The difference is that the former (TB) uses one base language (SB) with heavy borrowing and assimilations from English mainly and a bit fromUniversity local languages like Nyanja, and Afrikaans; the variety is used by people of different ethnic backgrounds, its commonly used in everyday life among educated and non-educated male and female speakers. TB also has been able to preserve many forms associated with more traditional Bemba and at the same time shows changes in some of its lexical and grammatical forms, mainly simplification. Tsotsitaal in comparison is associated with many base languages but behaves similarly to TB in other ways. In this regard, I suggest that TB be referred to as another type of an urban variety that is moving towards being a new language because it is more than a „stylect‟ (Hurst 2008) like Tsotsitaal. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Rajend Mesthrie for accepting me into this masters program in Linguistics. I wish to also thank him for his knowledge, support and also taking a lead in guiding me through the writing of my research. My sincere thanks go to the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF) via the SARCHI (NRF Research Chairs), the Lestrade Scholarships for African Languages and the Postgraduate Funding Office for the financial support throughout my studies at the University of Cape Town. I would like to also thank Rose Smouse and Ellen Hurst for their knowledge and ideas; Tracey Toefy and Alida Chevalier for helping me with the Praat and Vowel Normalisation Programs; Dominique Kabanje, Celia WalterTown for their advice and Dr. Kapambwe Lumbwe for assisting me with the Bemba translations on the data for my research work. I wish to also acknowledge Ms. Nuroo Ismail from the Knowledge Commons at the University of Cape Town main library for helpingCape me in formatting my work and Mr Maxwell Dikarai Sithole of the UniversityOf of Cape Town Writing Centre for editing my work. My appreciation also goes to all my informants who provided data for this research. These were from Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation, a national radio and television station and Radio Icengelo and some members of the public on the Copperbelt generally. University I am also grateful to my mum Beauty Booth Kabinga, my brothers Kayoba Kabinga, Mundia Kabinga (Jr.), Maimbo Kabinga and my sister Makondo Kabinga for believing in me and giving me the material and emotional support whenever I needed it. I will always remember my late father Mundia Kabinga (Snr.) for his inspirational words to always strive to achieve the best in life. To my friends Rafiki Yohana and Tendai Chikamhi, thank you for being there whenever I needed a friend. Thank you all. iii ABBREVIATIONS AUX Auxiliary verb CB Central Bemba CDC Curriculum Development Centre CP Complementizer Projection Dim Diminutive FUT Future Simple tense Inf Infinitive L1 First Language MOE Ministry of Education Town NEG Negative O Object OM Object marker Cape Pl. Plural Of PREP Preposition PRES Present Simple tense PRES Prog Present Progressive PST Past Simple tense PST Prog University Past Progressive SB Standard Bemba Sg Singular SM Subject marker TB Town Bemba TNS Tense marker UNZA University of Zambia V Verb Ø Zero Prefix iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION...................................................................................................................... I ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................. III ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................... IV CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY - ZAMBIA ............................................................................ 1 1.1.1 Geographical location .............................................................................................. 1 1.1.2 Languages in Zambia ................................................................Town................................ 4 1.1.3 Language Population and Statistics ......................................................................... 8 1.1.4 The Copperbelt Province ........................................................................................ 13 1.2 OVERVIEW ON BEMBA ....................................................................................................Cape 15 1.2.1 A Review of Literature on StandardOf Bemba ........................................................... 15 1.2.2 A Review of Literature on Town Bemba ................................................................. 18 1.3 PROBLEM DEFINITION ..................................................................................................... 22 1.4 MAIN OBJECTIVE ............................................................................................................. 23 1.5 LIMITATIONS ................................................................................................................... 23 University CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW ..................................................................................................... 24 2.1 INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................ 24 2.2 CONTACT LANGUAGES .................................................................................................... 24 2.3 RELATED LITERATURE .................................................................................................... 28 v CHAPTER THREE ............................................................................................................... 37 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .................... 37 3.1 INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................ 37 3.2 SAMPLING ....................................................................................................................... 37 3.3 DATA COLLECTION ......................................................................................................... 40 3.4 METHODS OF DATA ANALYSIS ........................................................................................ 41 CHAPTER FOUR LEXICAL, MORPHOSYNTATIC & PHONETICS DATA ANALYSES ....................... 45 4.1 INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................ 45 4.2 LEXICAL ANALYSIS ......................................................................................................... 45 4.2.1 Lexical borrowing in TB ................................................................Town........................