PHONOLOGICAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL NATIVIZATION OF ENGLISH NOUNS BORROWED INTO EKEGUSII: A CONSTRAINT-BASED APPROACH BY: ANYONA GEORGE MORARA BA (UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI), PGDE (KENYATTA UNIVERSITY), MA (EGERTON UNIVERSITY) A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS, LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE, KISII UNIVERSITY. NOVEMBER, 2017 DECLARATION DECLARATION BY THE CANDIDATE This thesis is my original work and it has not been submitted in this or any other university known to me. Sign…………………………………………………… Date……………………… George Morara Anyona DAS13/60010/2014 DECLARATION BY THE SUPERVISORS This thesis has been submitted with our approval as university supervisors. Sign ……………………………………………………….. Date………………………… Dr. David O. Ongarora, PhD Department of Linguistics, Maseno University Sign ……………………………………………………….. Date………………………… Dr. Evans G. Mecha, PhD Department of Lit., Lang. & Ling., Kisii University ii PLAGIARISM DECLARATION DECLARATION BY STUDENT i. I declare I have read and understood Kisii University Postgraduate Examination Rules and Regulations, and other documents concerning academic dishonesty. ii. I do understand that ignorance of these rules and regulations is not an excuse for a violation of the said rules. iii. If I have any questions or doubts, I realize that it is my respondibility to keep seeking an answer until I understand. iv. I understand I must do my own work. v. I also understand that if I commit any act of academic dishonesdty like plagiarism, my thesis/project can be assigned a fail grade (“F”). vi. I further understand I may be suspended or expelled from the university for academic dishonesty. Name: George Morara Anyona Signature:………………………….. Reg. No.: DAS13/60010/2014 Date:……………………………….. DECLARATION BY SUPERVISOR(S) i. I/we declare that this thesis has been submitted to plagiarism detection service. ii. The thesis contains less than 20% of plagiarized work. iii. I/we hereby give consent for making. 1. Name: Dr. David O. Ongarora, PhD Signature:………………………… Affiliation:………………………………………... Date:……………………………… 2. Name: Dr. Evans G. Mecha, PhD Signature:………………………… Affiliation:………………………………………... Date:……………………………… iii DECLARATION OF NUMBER OF WORDS Name of Candidate: GEORGE MORARA ANYONA Adm. No.: DAS13/60010/2014 Faculty: ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Department: LINGUISTICS, LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE Thesis Title: PHONOLOGICAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL NATIVIZATION OF ENGLISH NOUNS BORROWED INTO EKEGUSII: A CONSTRAINT-BASED APPROACH I confirm that the word length of: 1) The thesis, including footnotes, is 64, 004 2) the bibliography is 3, 972 And, if applicable, 3) the appendices are 3, 219 I also declare the electronic version is identical to the final, hard bound copy of the thesis and corresponds with those on which the examiners based their recommendation fro the award of the degree. Signed:……………………………………………… Date:……………………………….. (Candidate) I confirm that the thesis submitted by the above-named candidate complies with the relevant word length specified in the School of Postgraduate and Commission of University Education regulations for the Masters and PhD Degrees. Signed:………………………..Email:………………….Tel.:……………….Date:…………… (Supervisor 1) Signed:………………………..Email:………………….Tel.:……………….Date:…………… (Supervisor 2) iv COPYRIGHT All rights are reserved. No aprt of this thesis or information herein may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author of Kisii University on that behalf. © 2017, Anyona Morara George v ABSTRACT This study examines the phonology and morphology of English nouns borrowed into EkeGusii within Optimality Theory. This theory provides that the well formedness in natural languages is constraint governed. Thus, even borrowed lexical items obey these constraints. Constraints are universal and are ranked on a language specific order. The focus of this study is to investigate the phonological and morphological adjustments that English nouns borrowed into EkeGusii undergo as they harmonize themselves with EkeGusii phonological and morphological systems as they adapt EkeGusii constraints ranking order. The study analyzes segmental, phonotactic and suprasegmental adaptations that English nouns borrowed into EkeGusii undergo in the process of being nativized. Further, the study analyzes the affixation processes that characterize these nouns. The study analyses nominal prefixation, augmentation, and classification. The study was guided by the following objectives: to describe the phonological and morphological structures of EkeGusii and English nouns, to analyze the phonological adjustments that English nouns borrowed into EkeGusii undergo during nativization and to analyze the morphological changes that the English noun borrowed into EkeGusii undergo during nativization. The study adopted the descriptive and the explanatory research designs. Data was collected from a sample of 13 interviewees using semi-structured interviews. The interviewees were purposively sampled based on the semantic domains of the nouns collected. All the 349 English nouns borrowed into EkeGusii colleccted from the field constituted the sample size of the study. secondary data was used to describe the phonological and morphological strucures of EkeGusii in response to question 1. Library study and researcher’s intuition were the sources of the secondary data. To test the validity and reliability of the research instrument, pre-testing was carried out and appropriate adjustments and corrections made on the instument. The study yielded the following results. The first objective describes the phonological and morphological structures of English and EkeGusii. It was established that: Phonologically; the acoustic nature of the vowels in the two languages differ significantly, EkeGusii syllable structure is (V)CV, while that of English is (C)V(C), and EkeGusii is characterized by a number of phonological processes not found in English. Morphologically; EkeGusii nouns, unlike those of English, are grouped into classes determined by the semantics of the root of the noun, and affixation in the two languages is different. The second objective analyzed the phonological adjustments that English nouns borrowed into EkeGusii undergo. It was established that: phonemes of English not present in EkeGusii are substituted for those present in EkeGusii, the foreign syllable structure from English is re-syllabified to EkeGusii syllable structure, and English stress is tonemized in EkeGusii.The third objective analyzed the morphological changes that English nouns borrowed into EkeGusii undergo during nativization. It was found that: English nouns enter EkeGusii nominal classes which are semantically determined, nativization of the English nouns borrowed into EkeGusii is characterized by the pre-prefix and, semantics plays a significant role in morphological nativization of English nouns in EkeGusii. This study has establisshed that Optimality Theory can successively analyse English nouns borrowed into EkeGusii and that the nouns obey EkeGusii constraint ranking. It is hoped that this study would contribute to the theoretical understanding of borrowed word phonology and morphology of EkeGusii in particular and that of Bantu languages in general. vi DEDICATION To Moraa, my spouse and my children: Anyona, Nyantari, Nyaboke, Kerubo and Mokeira. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Many hands helped in coming up with this dissertation but given the limitations of space, I may not mention all of them, nor will I record all their individual contributions. However, the following people and institutions deserve special mentioning and recognition. Much credit goes to my supervisors, Dr. Evans Gesura Mecha and Dr. David Ogoti Ongarora for their valuable and unending advice, guidance and direction right from the time of topic selection and refining, and indeed to the final preparation of this dissertation. You were a blessing from God. Thank you. My sincere appreciations go to Professor Augustine Agwele of Texas State University-USA (an adjunct professor in KSU); firstly, for his scholarly advice and mentorship; secondly, for teaching me scholary patience; and thirdly and most importantly, for taking his time to read, critique and edit this work. Thanks a lot prof. I also take this opportunity to thank Dr. Nilson Opande, former COD, Department of Ling., Lang., and Lit.; now director, Board of Undergraduate Studies; Dr. Barasa Margaret, former COD, Ling., Lang., and Lit.; now current Dean, FASS, Kisii University; for their encouragement and efforts of all manner of kinds to ensure that this work is completed within time. You are not only my senior colleagues and mentors, but also my dear friends as well. As it is to every writer of a work of this nature, I owe a debt to all my teachers; from pre-school to this level, all my colleagues and my dear students; to you all, I gratefully acknowledge my deep indebtness. Much credit also go to the thirteen (13) great men and women of Nyagaachi village, Echoro sub- location, of Nyamira County, led by their able assistant chief, Mr. David Orina and village elder Mr. James Aricha, for readily and willingly availing themselves for interviewing and thus providing the data that was analyzed in this study. Your eagerness and willingness to participate in this study was