Morphological Integration of Lexical Borrowings from Kiswahili into Chimalaba

Abstract

This paper explores morphological strategies used to integrate lexical
borrowings from Kiswahili into Chimalaba. The data were collected by
Amani (2010) from a corpus of 169 lexical borrowings from Kiswahili
into Chimalaba. The analysis was guided by Assimilation Theory, which
holds that speakers assimilate borrowed words to the morphological
habits of their languages. The findings indicate that the speakers of the
recipient language do not fully integrate certain borrowed items;
instead they adopt them with their foreign features intact. The findings
further indicate that new sounds have been introduced into the
recipient language, viz. /f/, /z/ and /ï“/, as a result of adopting loanwords
from Kiswahili. Thus, the integration of Swahili loanwords has induced
some changes in the structure of Chimalaba.