This research analyses the influence of the power of a name, particularly on Zulu speaking people in South Africa. It further analyses the effect of names in other Nguni speaking communities in this country. On a wider scale it also looks at the power and the influence of names given to people of other countries on the African continent. The research primarily investigates the effects of the power of a name on the life of a black person. A name could actually lure a person to enact its meaning. For instance, the name uBagangile could influence the bearer of the name to be generally naughty or if not so, relatives around her might act naughty in different ways. It is pointed out that the act of name-giving with concomitant power vested in a name originates from God. The bearer was expected to act out the meaning of his/her name. God's power hidden in the name would constrain an individual to behave in a certain way within his/her community. The research points out that a name is not only a label that helps in the identification of an individual or an entity. A name is something that is multi-functional. First it becomes a label, a descriptive tool that may refer to a person's body structure. It is possible that a name may divulge a situation in which the person was born. Most importantly, it has the power to make the bearer become what the name means. Usually names carry one of the above accounts. If the name was chosen by an insightful name giver it may carry more than one of the above qualities. During the years of oppression before the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994, community members made extensive use of names from the languages of the white oppressors. White names had an impact on the lives of bearers, because of the meanings and contexts associated with them. / African Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

This research analyses the influence of the power of a name, particularly on Zulu speaking people in South Africa. It further analyses the effect of names in other Nguni speaking communities in this country. On a wider scale it also looks at the power and the influence of names given to people of other countries on the African continent. The research primarily investigates the effects of the power of a name on the life of a black person. A name could actually lure a person to enact its meaning. For instance, the name uBagangile could influence the bearer of the name to be generally naughty or if not so, relatives around her might act naughty in different ways. It is pointed out that the act of name-giving with concomitant power vested in a name originates from God. The bearer was expected to act out the meaning of his/her name. God's power hidden in the name would constrain an individual to behave in a certain way within his/her community. The research points out that a name is not only a label that helps in the identification of an individual or an entity. A name is something that is multi-functional. First it becomes a label, a descriptive tool that may refer to a person's body structure. It is possible that a name may divulge a situation in which the person was born. Most importantly, it has the power to make the bearer become what the name means. Usually names carry one of the above accounts. If the name was chosen by an insightful name giver it may carry more than one of the above qualities. During the years of oppression before the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994, community members made extensive use of names from the languages of the white oppressors. White names had an impact on the lives of bearers, because of the meanings and contexts associated with them. / African Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

The lack of terminology in Zulu can be overcome if it is developed to meet international scientific and technical demands. This lack of terminology can be traced back to the absence of proper language policy implementation with regard to the African languages. Even though Zulu possesses the basic elements that are necessary for its development, such as orthographical standards, dictionaries, grammars and published literature, a number of problems exist within the technical elaboration and standardisation processes: * Inconsistencies in the application of standard rules, in relation to both orthography and terminology. * The lack of standardisation of the (technical) word-formation patterns in Zulu. (Generally the role of culture in elaboration has largely been overlooked). * The avoidance of exploiting written technical text corpora as a resource for terminology. (Text encoding by means of corpus query tools in term extraction has just begun in Zulu and needs to be properly exemplified). * The avoidance of introducing oral technical corpora as a resource for improving the acceptability of technical terminology by, for instance, designing a type of reusable corpus annotation. This study contributes towards solving these problems by offering a practical approach within the context of the real written, standard and oral Zulu language, mainly within the medical terminological domain. This approach offers a reusable methodological foundation with proper language exemplification that can guide terminologists in terminological research, or to some extent even train them, to achieve effective technical elaboration and eventual standardisation. This thesis aims at attaining consistent standardisation on the orthographical level in order to ease the elaboration task of the terminologist. It also aims at standardising the methods of word- (term-) formation linking them to cultural factors, such as taboo. However, this thesis also emphasises the significance of using written and oral technical corpora as terminology resource. This, for instance, is made possible through the application of corpus linguistics, in semi-automatic term extraction from a written technical corpus to aid lemmatisation (listing entries) and in corpus annotation to improve the acceptability of terminology, based on the comparison of standard terms with oral terms. / Linguistics / D. Litt et Phil. (Linguistics)

The lack of terminology in Zulu can be overcome if it is developed to meet international scientific and technical demands. This lack of terminology can be traced back to the absence of proper language policy implementation with regard to the African languages. Even though Zulu possesses the basic elements that are necessary for its development, such as orthographical standards, dictionaries, grammars and published literature, a number of problems exist within the technical elaboration and standardisation processes: * Inconsistencies in the application of standard rules, in relation to both orthography and terminology. * The lack of standardisation of the (technical) word-formation patterns in Zulu. (Generally the role of culture in elaboration has largely been overlooked). * The avoidance of exploiting written technical text corpora as a resource for terminology. (Text encoding by means of corpus query tools in term extraction has just begun in Zulu and needs to be properly exemplified). * The avoidance of introducing oral technical corpora as a resource for improving the acceptability of technical terminology by, for instance, designing a type of reusable corpus annotation. This study contributes towards solving these problems by offering a practical approach within the context of the real written, standard and oral Zulu language, mainly within the medical terminological domain. This approach offers a reusable methodological foundation with proper language exemplification that can guide terminologists in terminological research, or to some extent even train them, to achieve effective technical elaboration and eventual standardisation. This thesis aims at attaining consistent standardisation on the orthographical level in order to ease the elaboration task of the terminologist. It also aims at standardising the methods of word- (term-) formation linking them to cultural factors, such as taboo. However, this thesis also emphasises the significance of using written and oral technical corpora as terminology resource. This, for instance, is made possible through the application of corpus linguistics, in semi-automatic term extraction from a written technical corpus to aid lemmatisation (listing entries) and in corpus annotation to improve the acceptability of terminology, based on the comparison of standard terms with oral terms. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt et Phil. (Linguistics)

While translation can be studied with a view to throwing light on a number of aspects in life, in this thesis translation has been researched with a view to outlining the development of written Zulu from its earliest stages, using twelve texts of the Book of Matthew. The Book of Matthew has been chosen in this undertaking because it was the first book of the Bible to be translated into Zulu and was thought to be the most apposite instrument with which the development of written Zulu could be measured. The polysystem theory and the descriptive approach to translation studies are the theoretical models that inform the arguments presented in this study. Polysystem theory sees translated literature as a system operating in the larger social, literary and historical systems of the target culture, while with the descriptive approach translations are regarded as facts of the target culture. Against this premise the focus of this study is mainly on the twelve translations of the Book of Matthew and no comparisons between source and target texts are undertaken here. Corpus-based research provided tools such as WordSmith Tools 3.0 for linguistic analysis. Biblical texts were obtained, scanned and presented in electronic format ready to be analysed. From the findings drawn, written Zulu developed all the way through Bible translation, with some translations revealing slight developments and others showing enormous ones. As the findings of this study reveal, Zulu developed gradually, as evidenced by the change to conjunctive writing which occurred over a considerable period, along with the appropriate representation of Zulu speech sounds and grammar conventions. It could also be established at what point during the development of the language, processes such as consonantalisation and palatalisation were introduced into the written language. It is also clear that words of Greek and Hebrew origin were brought into the Zulu language through Bible translation. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that it is feasible to use corpus-based research for analysis in the indigenous languages of South Africa. / Linguistics / D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

While translation can be studied with a view to throwing light on a number of aspects in life, in this thesis translation has been researched with a view to outlining the development of written Zulu from its earliest stages, using twelve texts of the Book of Matthew. The Book of Matthew has been chosen in this undertaking because it was the first book of the Bible to be translated into Zulu and was thought to be the most apposite instrument with which the development of written Zulu could be measured. The polysystem theory and the descriptive approach to translation studies are the theoretical models that inform the arguments presented in this study. Polysystem theory sees translated literature as a system operating in the larger social, literary and historical systems of the target culture, while with the descriptive approach translations are regarded as facts of the target culture. Against this premise the focus of this study is mainly on the twelve translations of the Book of Matthew and no comparisons between source and target texts are undertaken here. Corpus-based research provided tools such as WordSmith Tools 3.0 for linguistic analysis. Biblical texts were obtained, scanned and presented in electronic format ready to be analysed. From the findings drawn, written Zulu developed all the way through Bible translation, with some translations revealing slight developments and others showing enormous ones. As the findings of this study reveal, Zulu developed gradually, as evidenced by the change to conjunctive writing which occurred over a considerable period, along with the appropriate representation of Zulu speech sounds and grammar conventions. It could also be established at what point during the development of the language, processes such as consonantalisation and palatalisation were introduced into the written language. It is also clear that words of Greek and Hebrew origin were brought into the Zulu language through Bible translation. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that it is feasible to use corpus-based research for analysis in the indigenous languages of South Africa. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)