Development of a Setswana tonal minimal pair word list as research tool

This study reports on the development of a Setswana tonal minimal pair word list, which could be implemented as research tool in the field of Bantu language linguistics and in speech pathology in South Africa. The development of the list was conducted in four phases. These are described as four separate studies. All involved Setswana L1 participants living in the urban areas of Gauteng. In Study 1, a 45-pair preliminary list was compiled from dictionaries. During Study 2, eleven L1 speakers’ familiarity with each word was determined. Based on these results the list was narrowed down to 20 pairs. Study 3 entailed the validation of pictorial stimuli, which illustrate the target words. Ten different participants took part. Four pairs were not consistently familiar and were removed, resulting in the experimental list of 16 pairs. This list was validated in Study 4 and involved nine typical L1 speakers and five listeners. Word-specific analyses revealed that some words had a negative impact on the results. Six pairs were removed. A final list of 10 pairs rendered results more aligned to the expectation of typical speakers and listeners. Validation should continue to determine applicability in populations from exclusively rural or urban areas

Language contact and linguistic change: The case of Afrikaans and English influence on isiNdebele

Adoption is an unavoidable type of linguistic behaviour that occurs when two or more languages are in a state of contact with each other. Adoption is the introduction of single words or short frozen phrases from one variety (i.e. language) into the other. Adoption goes together with adaptation. There are different levels of adaptation, but this article focuses on adoptives which are fully indigenised. As such they are incorporated into the grammatical system of the borrowing language, treated as part of its lexicon, assume its phonological and morphological characteristics and enter into its syntactic structures. Numerous studies in African languages have illustrated that lesser developed languages have benefitted from the adoption of items from other languages. IsiNdebele, as one of the lesser developed indigenous languages of South Africa, has been in close contact with Afrikaans and English for many years and has adopted and adapted items from a number of word categories, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, relatives and conjunctions. This article investigates and discusses the adoption and adaptation of Afrikaans and English words by isiNdebele. The discussion focuses mainly on the various word categories in Afrikaans and English that isiNdebele has adopted items from, lexicalisation of Afrikaans phrases and the syntactic influence of Afrikaans on isiNdebele