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Earlier studies on interpretation such as Garcés (1996) and Hale (2004) show that interpreters often make the mistake of conveying only the semantic meaning; ignoring, misunderstanding or simply not conveying the pragmatic meaning of utterances. Other studies have also touched on issues of the classification of the types of errors made during interpretation Mead (1985), Karton (2008) and Kiguru (2008); they do not, however, provide a good understanding of errors that lead to stylistic and pragmatic modifications in interpretation from and to indigenous African languages. Research on interpretation in Kenyan courts is limited and there is none that examines Dholuo-English interpretations. Consequently, there is a need to have a broad and deep understanding of the stylistic and pragmatic meaning of modifications involving Dholuo-English data. The literature reviewed includes literature on courtroom interpreting and literature on meaning shifts in the courtroom. This study investigates courtroom interpretation using critical stylistic tools to determine the stylistic and pragmatic changes and their impact on ideation and interpersonal communication in the Target Text. The critical stylistic tools used from Jeffries (2010) are: presenting other people’s speech and thoughts, presenting actions and state, as well as naming and describing. In the data analysis, for presenting the speech of others, I use the reported speech categories by Short (2012) to examine fidelity to the text, for the description of actions and states I ground my work in the transitivity model by Halliday as explained by Simpson (1993) and for naming and description I use Halliday’s Functional Grammar to describe the Noun group. For analysis of pragmatic modifications during interpretation, the research is grounded in Austin’s (1962) Speech Act Theory and Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle. The data analysed consists of 12 court cases. The data collected is analysed using qualitative methods of analysis in order to determine inferences, give explanations and make conclusions. The results show changes in the Target Text which include: modifications to adhere to felicity conditions, passivisation to conform to how Dholuo reports speech from senior people, misreporting while using direct speech, distortion of facts, expansion of meaning, vagueness, changes to the verb processes, use of explanations, use of euphemisms that obscure meaning, changes in the tone of the source text and changes in the pre and post modifications of nouns that cause meaning loss. Reasons for these changes are: culturally bound words and phrases, legal jargon which has no Dholuo equivalents, specialised Kenyan English vocabulary, the nature of courtroom interpretation, the additional duties courtroom interpreters in Kenya carry out, as well as lack of training. This research uncovered a new role for interpreters in the courtroom of striving to maintain the dignity of the court as well as a new feature of adherence to felicity conditions in judgements.

The purpose of this thesis is to establish the part played by tone in the facts and operations of the language. This is achieved by analysing the observed speech-tones. In connected speech several tone-levels are used, but frequently the difference between two of these proves not to be significant. An initial investigation leads to a hypothesis of two essential tones. Prom the behaviour of certain tone-pat terns two distinct kinds of high-tones have to be recognized. The essential tones of basic nominals are discovered by observing their tone-patterns in given contexts. In this way there is established the existence of a single alternance of tone on each lexical syllable, and the absence of any tonal alternance on prefix syllables. Variations occur in the tones of some nominals according to their context, but frequently the tone-patterns are invariable. The tonal behaviour of compound nominals is related to the form as well as to the tones of their components. Where one nominal is based on another there is a close relationship between their tone-patterns. Verbals and nomino-verbals have a tonal behaviour different from that of nominals, but their syllables also display either a single tonal alternance or none at all. Several cases occur where the meaning of a verbal can be determined only when its tones are known. Although tone is not an important factor in indicating syntactical junctions, it often characterizes such Junctions. Interrogative speech is indicated by the use of different intervals between the tone-levels rather than by the use of special tone-patterns. Whether considered lexically, morphologically or syntactically the tones are an integral part of the language which can neither be adequatly analysed her accurately used unless they are taken into account.

Six north-eastern Bantu languages spoken in Kenya are the subject of this thesis. They are Dawida, Saghala, Giryama, Kikuyu, Mvita and Unguja, Saghala, Giryama and Mvita lack substantial primary documentation, Dawida lacks any, and Kikuyu and Unguja are adequately documented. A study of the kind of relationships these languages display with each other has not been undertaken before, and consequently their place in existing classifications has not been free from ambiguities. Chapter 1is a general introduction to the subject of the study, its aims and scope, and the procedures employed. The comparative approach adopted here is M. Guthrie's methodology as it is presented in his Comparative Bantu: an introduction to the comparative linguistic and -prehistory of the Bantu languages (4 volumes, The Gregg Press Ltd., Farnborough, Hants, 1967-1971 ). It is based on the examination of lexicons of particular languages and on relating items with a common meaning and regular sound- correspondence s. Results of such examination may or may not be interpreted diachronically. Since this study seeks to establish how close the relationships are between the six selected languages against their common Bantu background, the second chapter contains description of the processes by means of which Common Bantu cognates were identified in each language. It also contains notes on the tendencies, as far as they were found to exist, among sound- correspondences of items which are not perfect cognates of Common Bantu. Items which have been identified as perfect cognates of Common Bantu are then treated statistically (chapter 3) and several indices are obtained for degrees of closeness of relationships between each two pairs. The resulting degrees of closeness are then ordered hierarchically and, in conclusion (chapter 4), languages are grouped according to the degree of closeness of relationship between each other, and a tentative diachronic statement is made regarding their likely genealogy.

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