Morphophonological Features of English Loanwords and Code Switching in Spoken Nigerian Fulfulde
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Belonging to the West-Atlantic branch (Greenberg, 1963), Fulfulde has borrowed numerous words and expressions from the English language to enrich its vocabulary, following its contact with English, the British colonial heritage. These loanwords or borrowings have undergone morphological and phonological modifications when used in Fulfulde, which has ‘spilled’ an indigenous flavour over these words. The study is based on Myers-Scotton’s (1997) frame of Maxim Language Model, whereby maxim language imposes its morphology and phonological grammar on the recipient language, known as the Embedded language, which is English in this study. The aim of this paper is to analyse the morphophonologically-adapted English loanwords and code-switching incorporated in Nigerian Fulfulde, which is gaining ground and is increasingly spread across the northern, northeast, and western part of Nigeria, like Borno State, Adamawa, Gombe, Bauchi, Zaria, etc. The study focuses on the segmental and syllable-related aspects. Data for this study was collected via pre-recorded audio materials, discussion with Fulfulde-English bilingual informants and informal observation of daily natural conversation of speakers of Fulfulde. Findings reveal that phonological adaptation of English loanwords and code-switching in Fulfulde occurs through such features as vowel and consonant substitution, systematic lengthening of vowel, vowel addition, vowel epenthesis and syllable elongation. Article visualizations:
Author: Hamidou Bappa
Institution: University of Maroua
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4410304358