An examination of how loanwords in a corpus of spoken and written contemporary isiXhosa are incorporated into the noun class system of isiXhosa

Lexical change is a natural phenomenon for all of the world’s languages. This change can be viewed in terms of language contact, technological innovation and the adoption of new lifestyles. Whereas in the past isiXhosa, a Nguni language spoken in South Africa, borrowed words from both English and Afrikaans, contemporary speakers rely more on the English lexicon, with some previous adoptions from Afrikaans being replaced by those from English. This study focusses specifically on contemporary borrowed, or loanword nouns in isiXhosa which are brought into the noun class system of the language via a number of different noun class prefixes. The focus of this study is to understand whether there are any features or properties, whether morphological or semantic, that predispose loanword nouns to fall into a particular noun class. In this thesis I therefore analyse a corpus of new data from conversations and interviews I conducted with contemporary isiXhosa-speakers, as well as from written translation activities. After providing a general background to the semantic content of isiXhosa noun classes, I analyse the new data and try to make some conclusions as to which noun class prefix is the most productive for loanwords, as well as to argue the existence of a significant amount of variation in terms of prefixes used. The study concludes that most loanword nouns are assigned to Noun Class 9, but some speakers also use Noun Classes 1a, 5 and 7 as alternatives for Class 9 under certain morphological and semantic conditions. Even Noun Class 3 was found to contain a number of loanword nouns, suggesting that speakers are able to manipulate the grammar of isiXhosa, and particularly its noun class system, to accommodate words from other languages.

Grantor

School of Languages and Literatures

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Futuse, Liziwe

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Dowling, Tessa
• Deyi, Somikazi

• African Languages and Literatures

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/30509

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/30509