THE NATURE OF LEXICAL BORROWING IN URHOBO LANGUAGE

ABSTRACT

The scope of our world is infinite in nature. New entities and phenomenal are invented regularly, and as such, the need to constantly expand the vocabulary of a language is important. This is to enable such a 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 lexical item from a language otherwise known as donor language, to another language known as recipient language. The act of borrowing is common to all languages. This study has discussed in detail, the nature of lexical borrowing in Urhobo, one of the Edoid languages spoken by the Urhobo people of southern Nigeria. Its centre focus is to determine: (a) the kinds 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 literary and spoken data. The work is segmented into five chapters : Chapter one is an Introductory note of what the work entails; Chapter two deals with a review of relevant literature on the concept of lexical borrowing; Chapter three on the other hand deals with Theoretical Frame, that is the frame work this work will be built upon; Chapter four shows data presentation and analysis; Lastly Chapter five deals with Finding and Conclusion to the work.