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Language maintenance
Language maintenance refers to the preservation of a native language by a speech community over generations. At first glance, this definition sounds to be contradictory of the concept of language change. However, it is not in that preservation does not imply that the language of the maintaining community remains intact. As already observed above, all living languages change over time. Therefore, the language of the maintaining community changes, but it only changes by small degrees. While changes occur in the language, the various subsystems of the language (that is, the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and the core lexicon) remain relatively intact (Winford, 2002). Winford identifies two different cases of language maintenance, each one of which involves a different degree of influence on the lexicon and structure of a group’s native language from the external language or languages that it comes into contact with. These are discussed below.
The first case of language maintenance is linguistic borrowing. According to Lehmann (1992), borrowing is a process whereby speakers of one language introduce into their language or speech variety elements of another language or speech variety. Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 37) define borrowing as “the incorporation of foreign features into a group’s language by speakers of that language”. One thing that comes across very clearly from these two definitions is that linguistic borrowing involves more than one linguistic element or feature. In this regard, it is important to note that the linguistic features that are borrowed from one language to another differ from situation to situation both in terms of the number of elements involved and the magnitude of the borrowing.
Linguists have argued that borrowing is a necessary phenomenon for the survival of language. For instance, Appel and Muysken (1987) argue that it is hard to imagine a language that has not borrowed from some other language, even though speakers of different languages may not accept that their language has borrowed. One of the main reasons why speech communities borrow is so that they can “… cope linguistically with a world that is always changing”, although “changes in our world are neither necessary nor sufficient to bring about changes in our language” (Keller, 1994: 5). In order for one to have clear understanding of the borrowing that has taken place in a particular language, one would have to engage in a process of etymology, which is the study of the history or origins of individual words. However, this process is ‘easier’ in languages with written records than in languages without such.
Chapter One: Overview of the research
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Chibrazi, the urban contact vernacular language of Malaŵi
1.3. Background to this research
1.4. Statement of the problem
1.5. Aim and specific objectives of the research
1.6. Research questions
1.7. Significance of the research
1.8. Research design and research methodology
1.9. Conclusion
Chapter Two: Literature review
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Language change
2.3. Types of language change
2.4. Outcomes of language contact
2.4.1. Language maintenance
2.4.2. Language shift
2.4.3. The creation of new contact languages
2.5. The term urban contact vernacular
2.6. Language change in Malaŵi
2.7. Definition of terms used in the description of language manipulation processes
2.8. Conclusion
2.9. Points to note
Chapter Three: Research design and research methodology
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Collecting the corpus of Chibrazi
3.3. Conducting a case study
3.3.1. The location of the case study
3.3.2. The sample of the case study
3.3.3. Dimensions of variation
3.3.3.1. Gender
3.3.3.2. Occupation
3.3.3.3. Age
3.3.3.4. Home district
3.3.3.5. First language
3.3.3.6. Additional languages
3.3.3.7. Areas of residence
3.3.4. Ethical clearance for the research
3.3.5. The pilot studies
3.3.6. The questionnaire
3.3.7. Interviews
3.3.8. Observation in the case study
3.4. Data analysis
3.5. Challenges encountered in the research
3.6. Conclusion
Chapter Four: Origins of Chibrazi
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Chibrazi as a product of language contact
4.3. Urbanisation in Malaŵi
4.4. Chibrazi and migration for employment
4.5. Chibrazi and education
4.6. Chibrazi and the language policy
4.7. Efforts to diffuse Chibrazi
4.8. Agents of the spread of Chibrazi
4.9. A sample of Chibrazi
4.10. Conclusion
Chapter five: The creation of the lexicon of Chibrazi, a focus on semantic manipulation
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Explaining metaphoric manipulation using Lakoff’s contemporary theory of metaphor
5.3. Examples of semantic maintenance
5.4. Examples of semantic shift
5.5. Examples of semantic narrowing
5.6. Examples of semantic extension
5.7. Examples of morphophonological manipulation
5.7.1. Compounding
5.7.2. Pluralisation and depluralisation
5.7.3. Duplication
5.7.4. Truncation or clipping
5.7.5. Metathesis
5.8. Examples of other varieties of Chibrazi
5.8.1. The basic structure of Chibrazi
5.9. Examples that show signs of syntactic change: Foreignisation
5.10. Conclusion
Chapter Six: Who speaks Chibrazi?
Chapter Seven: Perceptions about Chibrazi
Chapter eight: Characteristics that Chibrazi shares with other African urban contact vernacular languages
Chapter nine: Interpreting Chibrazi as a language phenomenon
Chapter ten: Summary of the research
