Additive and Substitutive Borrowing against Semantic Broadening and Narrowing in the Names of Architectural Structures in Tanzanian Bantu Languages

The thrust of this paper lies on semantic changes associated with additive and substitutive borrowing in Bantu-speaking communities in Tanzania. Due to contact of languages, semantic differences of the terms related to architectural structures emanate. Apart from data from a few elderly native speakers, research was carried out with the help of undergraduate students of linguistics. Further linguistic materials analysed herein come from dictionaries and lexicons. Although retention of the proto- Bantu words are apparent, findings indicate that cases of additive borrowing are obvious for new concepts associated with new architectural structures. The additive Swahili names incorporated into Tanzanian Bantu tend to designate specific concepts associated with modern (contemporary) architectural senses such as mulango ‘modern door’ vs. luigi ‘traditional entranceway’. Cases of substitutive borrowing are rare, as demonstrated by the Swahili word dirisha ‘window’ which replaces chitonono in Chimakonde, echihúru in Runyambo, ilituulo in Kinyakyusa etc.Keywords: Architectural Terms, Additive Borrowing, Onomastics, Semantic Changes, Substitutive Borrowing, Tanzanian Bant

Swahili Loanwords and their Semantic Nativisations into African Languages

Traditionally, contributions of loanwords to the morphology of mostAfrican languages are recognizable in terms of phoneme inventories, consonant clusters, and syllable structures. The present paper, however, articulates the semantic and pragmatic issues emanating from the Swahili loanwords into the morphology of most African languages in Tanzania. The focus is mainly on the influence of Swahili into the different semantic fields in ten Bantu languages in the country. Data of 500 lexical words is drawn from a sample of Bantu languages in the country. Formal interviews had also been conducted to decipher semantic and pragmatic inferences springing out of the usages of those loanwords in the respective speech communities. It is concluded that most semantic fields of loanwords include education, utensils and domestic tools, as well as health and medical care services. In addition, pragmatically, some loanwords divide communities according to their usages, e.g. in Ruhaya and Runyambo, the entriesfor church include ekerezía [<ecclesia, ecclesiae Latin] which is dominantly used for Roman Catholic churches while ekanisa [<kanisa, Swahili] is used by Lutheran churches

Recycled Waste Increased Tomato Production Under Field Conditions

As more municipal sewage sludge (SS) treatment districts turn to composting as a means of sludge stabilization and because of the rapid growth in the poultry industry, significant chicken manure (CM) and municipal SS generation will become available in increasing quantities. A field trial area was established at the University of Kentucky South Farm. Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum var. Mountain spring) seedlings of 52 days old was planted in 30’ × 144’ beds of freshly tilled soil at eight inch row spacing on June, 2016. The entire study area contained 30 plots ( 3 replicates × 10 treatments). Each bed was divided into three replicates in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with the following 10 treatments: 1) control (no-mulch untreated soil); 2) sewage sludge; 3) horse manure; and 4) chicken manure; and 5) yard waste compost. Each of the 5 treatments was also mixed with 1% bichar to make a total of 10 treatments. Results revealed that yields obtained from CM and CM mixed with biochar were highest wheres, yield obtained from yard waste compost was lowest compared to other soil treatments. Accordingly, recycling CM waste for use as a low-cost fertilizer resulted in a positive effect on the growth and yield of tomato

Terms for cardinal directions in eastern Bantu languages

Different languages employ different mechanisms to express cardinal directions. New information on terms for cardinal directions is revealed in many studies by anthropological and cognitive linguists on minority languages of the world. However, there are gaps in studies on nomenclature for cardinal directions in Africa languages which this paper aims to fill by providing a detailed examination of such nomenclature. The paper is based on data from a sample of 42 Eastern Bantu languages. Elicitation and extraction of terms from dictionaries were the main data collection techniques used. The study found out that there are seven sources used to derive terms for cardinal directions namely, names of ethnic groups, names of bodyparts, direction of sunrise and sunset, water-bodies (oceans and lakes), terrain (uphill and downhill), winds, and lexical borrowing. The paper found that reference to terrain (uphill and downhill) and ethnic communities were the most popular sources of cardinal terms in Eastern Bantu. The study also found that naming cardinal direction based on wind, usually associated with coastal Bantu, is also found in the interior of Africa in such languages as Gogo and Ndebele. Finally, contrary to previous studies, the study found that in Eastern Bantu north/south cardinal terms are more prominent than terms for east and west.Keywords: Anthropological linguistics, cardinal terms, eastern Bantu, lexicography, salienc

The linguistic situation in Orkesumet, an urban area in Simanjiro District of Tanzania

An investigation of the linguistic landscape in urban Africa is a welcome contribution to make in that multilingualism presents fascinating results. To satisfy this demand, the current paper investigates the patterns of language use in billboards in a small township of Orkesumet in northern Tanzania. Data demonstrates that the state of Kiswahili and English bilingualism is apparently open for religiously, privately and publicly owned institutions such as schools, churches, public offices, and accommodation facilities. Such bilingual billboards do not make use of hybrid language because there were no tokens of Kiswahili-English, Maasai-English and Kiswahili-Maasai recorded in the area. The main mechanism used to attract customers is through the selection of font-colour and font-size. The large font in black colour is preferred for names of firms, while red colour is opted for items sold and/or services rendered.Keywords: Bilingualism, Billboards, Language Use, Simanjiro, Tanzani

The Effects of Board Structure Characteristics on Corporate Financial Performance in Developing Economies: Evidence from East African Stock Markets

This study examine the linkage between board structure characteristics and corporate financial performance in a developing market, East African stock markets. To achieve the objective of this study, we used a strongly balanced panel dataset of 240 observations including 30 non-financial listed firms in East African region covering the period from 2006-2013 (8 years period). Measures for corporate financial performance employed were return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) as dependent variables for econometric Model 1 and Model 2 respectively and explanatory (independent) variables for board structure characteristics were board size (BS), number of non-executive directors (NED), CEO duality (CD) and board and managerial shareholdings (BMS).furthermore, the effects of control variable such as firm size (SIZ) has been also examined. The panel corrected standard errors (PCSEs) and random effects (RE) regression models were employed for Model 1-ROA and Model 2-ROE respectively to analyze the data. Our results indicate a statistically significant positive effects of board size (BS), number of non-executive directors (NED) and CEO duality (CD) on East African listed firm’s financial performance while board and managerial shareholding (BMS) has a statistically significant negative effects on East African listed firm’s financial performance at 5% significance level. Finally, the study recommends East African listed firm’s to adopt a larger size of board of directors , large proportion of non-executive directors in the board, CEO-Chair position in their organization structure and a small portion of board and managerial shareholding on their ownership structure in order to improve their financial performance, but also securities markets regulatory authorities in East African region such as East African member states securities regulatory authority (EASRA) and their respective countries securities markets regulatory authorities to stimulates new efforts towards better corporate governance practices especially board structure characteristics due to its statistically significant effects on companies financial performance and future research can be extended after considering other board structure characteristics which were not included in this study like board meeting, board attendance, biography of board members and existence of the position of chief financial officer (CFO) in board of directors (BOD). Keywords: Board Structure Characteristics, Corporate Financial Performance, Panel Data, Developing Economies, East African Stock Markets

Status of Big Data In Internet of Things: A Comprehensive Overview

Abstract: Reports suggests that total amount of data generated everyday reaches 2.5 quintillion bytes [9], annual global IP traffic run rate in 2016 was 1.2 zettabytes and will reach 3.3 zettabytes by 2021 [12]. According to Gartner [25], Internet of Things excluding personal computers, tablets and smartphones will grow to 26 billion units of installed devices in year 2020. This results from penetration of digital applications which highly motivated by smart societies which can be defined as to when a society deploys light and advanced computer technologies to aid provision and or supply chain value of social, cultural, governance and economic utilities for efficiency. Smart society is equipped with mobile, ubiquitous computing facilities, sensors and cyber-physical systems aims at exploring economies of scale; and to large extent it has been made possible with Internet of Things (IoT). This survey paper discusses status of big data in Internet of Things; how IoT generates big data, nature of data generated and dynamics in IoT as influenced by big data

Yagi-Uda Antenna Gain Improvement for Enhanced Reception of DVB-T2 Signals

Yagi-Uda Antenna is a widely used roof top DVB-T2 receiver antenna due to its high forward gain capability, low cost and ease in construction. In Tanzania, there have been some complaints which were logged to Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) by the customers on the poor reception of DVB-T2 signals which may be caused by signal degradation. In this paper we propose enhancement of the gain of the Yagi antenna so as to improve the reception signals of the DVB-T2. This will help solve those complaints. It is well known that the increase in radiation pattern causes the increase in directivity and hence gain which will have an impact on good quality of reception for DVB-T2 signals coming from the transmitter. After carefully design and simulation in FEKO simulating software by adding the number of director elements and making some adjustments on the length and spacing between the elements, we managed to increase the gain of the antenna by 4.7dB. This is significant improvement of the quality of received signals. Keywords: DVB-T2, Yagi Uda antenna, Set Top Box (STB), antenna gain, Directivity, Wavelength, Electric field strength, Signal reception, Radiation pattern

Wireless Network Security: Challenges, Threats and Solutions. A Critical Review

Abstract: Wireless security is the avoidance of unlawful access or impairment to computers using wireless networks. Securing wireless network has been a research in the past two decades without coming up with prior solution to which security method should be employed to prevent unlawful access of data. The aim of this study was to review some literatures on wireless security in the areas of attacks, threats, vulnerabilities and some solutions to deal with those problems. It was found that attackers (hackers) have different mechanisms to attack the networks through bypassing the security trap developed by organizations and they may use one weak pint to attack the whole network of an organization. However the author suggested using firewall in each wireless access point as the counter measure to protect data of the whole organization not to be attacked

What Determine Corporate Capital Structure in Developing Economies? Evidence from East African Stock Markets

The purpose of this study is to determine what factors are statistically significant influencing the corporate capital structure in East African stock markets. The study used panel dataset of 240 observations including 30 non-financial companies listed in East African stock markets such as Dar Es Salaam Stock Market (DSE), Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) and Uganda Securities Exchange (USE) for a period of 8 years (2006-2013).Using the Panel Corrected Standard Errors (PCSEs), the study formulated three (3) regression models for long term debt, short term debt and total debt as dependent variables for model 1, model 2 and model 3 respectively. The results shows that all independent variables used in the models (profitability, size of the firm, tangibility of firm assets, liquidity and non-debt tax shield) were statistically significant influencing corporate capital structure except non debt tax shield which proves to be statistically insignificant for short term debt. The study found that trade off theory and pecking order theory were applied in corporate capital structure decisions for the East Africa companies. Lastly the study recommends to financial managers to consider these determinants as yardstick in their capital structure decisions, regulatory authorities in East Africa stock Market such as East African securities regulatory authority (EASRA) to formulate policies relating to securities markets by taking into consideration these findings and also  to researchers to conduct future researches after incorporating other variables like corporate governance structure, financial flexibility, credit rating etc. and to include other capital structure theories like agency theory which were not considered in this study. Keywords: Capital Structure, Panel Data, Developing Economies, East African Stock Market