Phonological Nativisation of Kipsigis Loanwords

Abstract

Nativization is the linguistic readjustment that a language experiences at the phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical levels due to the influence of local languages and various Socio-cultural factors. This study is on the nativization of loanwords in Kipsigis and the main objectives are to i) identify and categorise the loan words in Kipsigis language ii) describe the phonological processes involved in their nativization and iii) account for these changes using Distinctive Feature Theory and CV -Phonology theories. The Distinctive Feature Theory and CVPhonology Theory will guide the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data. The methodology will involve a generation of Corpus of words (nouns) from respondents in a semistructured interview, but tape recording will also be used to back up the data. Data collection will be done in two villages in Bomet County namely; Chebirbelek village (an urban area) and Chesoton village (a rural setting). The number of respondents targeted will be forty half from Chesoton and half from Chebirbelek from the 20 in each village 10 will be men ant the other 10 will be women from the lOin each gender 5 will have at least a KCPE certificate and above while the other 5 will be those who have not stepped into the formal system of education or do not possess a KCPE cerficate. Whi Ie tenets of CV -Phonology notations wi II be used to analyse the resyllabification strategies, Distinctive Feature theory will be used in differentiating phonemes. The results of the research will hopefully assist in understanding the process of language transfer and also in identifying possible errors / substitutions that students make in learning a new language. Lastly, it is hoped that this study will stimulate further research in the areas of Kipsigis phonology and nativisation.