MER Mathivha Centre for African Languages, Arts and Culture / MA (Xitsonga)

Kinyarwanda, like many other languages in contact, has adapted foreign words to meet the needs of its daily life vocabulary and activity. In addition to the lexical need filling, Kinyarwanda borrowed foreign words not only out of need for foreign words but also for prestige. This thesis is based on two hypotheses: Kinyarwanda has borrowed foreign words out of need in various areas; loanwords have been allocated to Kinyarwanda noun class system. This work has discussed and analysed how French and English loanwords have been allocated to key areas of influence and the nominal class system of Kinyarwanda. The data were collected from various sources, including publications, conversation, newspapers, Bible literature, school text books, commercial posters, hoardings. The study has analysed loanwords from French/English deceptive cognates in a bilingual context. This is a challenging task for other researchers who will have to deal with the complexity of deceptive cognate loanwords. / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

Thesis (M.A.) --University of Limpopo, 2012 / The study dealt with enrichment of Tshivenḓa language through adoption of words from other languages such as English, Afrikaans, Sotho, Tsonga, Zulu and many more. The study discovered that no language can remain static forever and this applies to Tshivenḓa as well. Every successive generation makes its own small contribution to language change and when sufficient time has elapsed the impact of these changes becomes more obvious. It however cautions that borrowing of words should not be overdone as this may lead to the disappearance of Tshivenḓa as we know it.

This essay focuses on style-related challenges that translators may face when translating from German to Swedish. The translated source text stems from the biography Kafka: The Years of Insight. Its literary style and its use of less frequent words make it particularly suitable for a study of the translation of stylistic traits. The essay raises the question whether the style of the source text can be reproduced or not. The analysis is limited to the stylistic aspects of words and includes the area of metaphors and word choice, in particular the translation of foreign words and elevated or archaic style. The study is qualitative and based on Koller's (2011) theory of connotative equivalence and the theories of linguistic and cognitive aspects of metaphors as defined by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Schäffner (2004). The analysis reveals that style-related translation challenges are caused by the limitations of the target language, yet, the translator is expected to reproduce the style of the source text. Thus, this essay argues that translation has more to do with recreating the style of the source text. This goes against the general view that the style of the target text is merely a reproduction of the source text.

Children of Italian immigrants in Montreal are in contact with many languages and kinds of speech. French and English are used publicly, formal Italian is studied in heritage classes, a dialect of the family's region of origin is used at home, and a kind of koine is frequently used in interactions with other Italian immigrants. The contact of these languages produces various kinds of interferences. These lead a child to make errors when he tries to use the Standard Italian code. In this research, children's compositions are examined for errors which in turn are analysed and classified. The causes of these errors are investigated and statistics are presented to indicate the frequency of errors or the power of various causes. / An effort is made to show all the different errors and interferences that occur, and to discover a pattern of their causes. The data put forth might eventually serve as a base for further studies on the pedagogical prevention or correction of errors in the teaching of Standard Italian as adapted to the specific situation in Montreal.

This study focuses on English loanwords in Thai, particularly the treatment of consonants in different environments, namely onset/coda simplification, laryngeal features, medial consonants, and liquid alternation, within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT: Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004). The major objectives are: (1) to examine the way English loanwords are adapted to a new environment, (2) to investigate how conflict between faithfulness and markedness constraints is resolved and in what ways through OT grammars, and (3) finally to be a contribution to the literature of loan phonology in OT since there has not been much literature on English loanwords in Thai within the recent theoretical framework of Optimality TheoryThe data are drawn from an English-Thai dictionary (Sethaputa 1995), an on-line English-Thai dictionary, an English loanword dictionary (Komutthamwiboon 2003), and earlier studies of English loans in Thai by Udomwong (1981), Nacaskul (1989), Raksaphet (2000), and Kenstowicz and Atiwong (2004).The study has found that Thais replace unlicensed consonants with either auditory similar segments or shared natural class segments, as in /v/ in the English and [w] in word borrowing due to auditory similarity, /g/ in the English source replaced by [k] because of shared place of articulation. Vowel insertion is found if the English source begins with /sC/ as in /skaen/ scan -> [stkc cn]. Since Thai allows consonant clusters, a second segment of the clusters is always retained if it fits the Thai phonotactics, as in /gruup/ `group' -4 [kruip]. In coda, consonant clusters must be simplified. Consonant clusters in the English source are divided into five main subgroups. Sometimes Thais retain a segment adjacent to a vowel and delete the edge, as in /lcnzi lens -4 [len].However, a postvocalic lateral [1] followed by a segment are replaced by either a nasal [n] or a glide [w]. In terms of repair strategies, the lowest ranked faithfulness constraints indicate what motivates Thais to have consonant adaptation. MAX-I0, DEP-I0, IDENT-I0 (place) reveal that segmental deletion, insertion, and replacement on the place of articulation are employed to deal with marked structures, respectively. The two lines of approaches (Positional Faithfulness, Positional Markedness) have been examined with respect to segments bearing aspiration or voicing. The findings have shown that both approaches can be employed to achieve the same result. In medial consonants, ambisyllabic consonants in the English source undergo syllable adaptation and behave like geminates in word borrowings in Thai. Most cases show that ambisyllabic/geminate consonants in loanwords are unaspirated. A few cases are aspirated.The study has revealed that there is still more room for improvement in 0T. The standard OT allowing only a single output in the surface form is challenged. Some English loanwords have multiple outputs. For instance, /aesfoolt/ `asphalt' can be pronounced either [26tf6n] or [26tf6w]. Another example is the word /k h riim / `cream' can be pronounced as [k h riim], [khliim], and [khiim]. To account for these phenomena requires a sociolinguistic explanation. / Department of English

Kinyarwanda, like many other languages in contact, has adapted foreign words to meet the needs of its daily life vocabulary and activity. In addition to the lexical need filling, Kinyarwanda borrowed foreign words not only out of need for foreign words but also for prestige. This thesis is based on two hypotheses: Kinyarwanda has borrowed foreign words out of need in various areas; loanwords have been allocated to Kinyarwanda noun class system. This work has discussed and analysed how French and English loanwords have been allocated to key areas of influence and the nominal class system of Kinyarwanda. The data were collected from various sources, including publications, conversation, newspapers, Bible literature, school text books, commercial posters, hoardings. The study has analysed loanwords from French/English deceptive cognates in a bilingual context. This is a challenging task for other researchers who will have to deal with the complexity of deceptive cognate loanwords. / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)

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