A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF DELETION PROCESSES OF KANURI-ENGLISH LOANWORDS

Abstract

This paper examines deletion process in Kanuri-English loanwords.
The objectives of the study are to i) identify the loanwords ii) classify
them iii) examine the nature and the process of linguistic
modification found in the loanwords. The loanwords were extracted
manually from the dictionary and were descriptively analysed with
instances from both languages. The study reveals that borrowed words
were found to have the following phonological characteristics:
deletion, fricativization, vowel insertions, degemination etc. But our
study is only limited to the process of deletion. With regards to the
frequency of occurrence observed, the English loanwords are found
to be 25.47% of the seven hundred and thirty (730) words found in
the dictionary during the course of this study.