Morphological adaptation of verb borrowings from Keiyo and Nandi languages on the vitality of Talai-Marakwet dialect
Abstract
Linguists over time are in agreement that there is a transfer of linguistic material when languages come into contact. This research sought to establish the vitality of the TalaiMarakwet dialect resulting from the morphological adaptation of Keiyo and Nandi verbs. The main thrust was to assess the extent of morphological adaptation of Keiyo and Nandi verbs on the vitality of TalaiMarakwet. The study adopted a descriptive research design. The number of respondents was obtained from a total population of 137,513. The sample size was obtained using random sampling procedures. This sampling helped in verifying the self- generated data on borrowed lexical verbs from Nandi and Keiyo languages into TalaiMarakwet dialect. The samples of borrowed lexical items for the study constitute fifty (50) verbs, that is, twenty-five (25) from Keiyo and twenty-five (25) from Nandi languages. The words used in analysis were obtained from six semantic fields namely; education, media, religion, farming, transportation and business. The findings from the study show that the adapted words undergo morphological modification to fit in with the TalaiMarakwet morphological template of words in the verbal system.
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