Dissecting the phenomenon of borrowing in Urhobo

Abstract

The scope of our world is infinite in nature. New entities and phenomena are invented regularly, and as such, the need to constantly expand the vocabulary of any language is important. This is to enable the language to identify any new entity or phenomenon which may not have existed at some point; thus, the introduction of a new entity or phenomenon into a culture is concomitant with the introduction of a new word into its language. A language uses different processes of word formation to incorporate new words into its vocabulary. The most common of these processes is borrowing, which entails copying a lexical item from a language otherwise known as donor language, to another language known as recipient language. The act of borrowing is an upshot of language contact and it is triggered by the need to name a new concept or element. Imasuen (1998/1999) opined that borrowing is one of the several means by which languages adapt in response to a continuously changing socio cultural environment. As a common phenomenon to all languages, borrowing manifests itself in four different forms namely loan word, loan blend, loan translation and loan shift. This study discussed in detail and within the theoretical framework of functional grammar, the phenomenon of borrowing in Urhobo, a Benue-Congo language spoken by the Urhobo people of southern Nigeria. Its centre focus is to determine: (a) the forms of borrowing in the language; (b) rationale for borrowing in the language; (c) the donor languages; and (d) the effect of borrowing on the language. These were achieved through the collection and analysis of written and spoken data.