Phonemic substitutions in the English-Tiv loan phonology

Abstract

All living languages borrows new words to enrich their own languages. Tiv language has borrowed a lot of loan words from the English language as a result of language contact. This paper analyses phonemic substitutions in the English-Tiv loan phonology. The main objectives of this study are to discuss vowel and consonant substitutions in the English-Tiv loan phonology and to state the implications of English-Tiv loan phonology in the study of the Tiv grammar. This study adopts LaCharite & Paradis’ (2005) phonological Repair Model and Calabrese Andrea’s (2009) Acoustic Approximation Model. The author used both primary and secondary sources in this study. Under primary sources, the researcher compiled the list of English-Tiv loan words through the participant-observer method, and the secondary sources were obtained from journal articles, textbooks, and dictionaries. From this study, the following observations were made: that English-Tiv loan phonology leads to coda declusterisation. Tiv phonology does not have /θ/, /ð/, /ʒ/, /ʌ/ and /ə/ phonemes; so the said phonemes are being replaced by /t/, /d/, /ʃ/, /ɔ:/ and /æ/. It has been discovered that some loan words maintain their original spellings but have different pronunciations. This paper is an advancement of scholarship on phonemic substitutions in the English-Tiv loan phonology, making it an important addition to secondary sources of data on the critical reception of English-Tiv loan words and promoting the Tiv language within and beyond the academic cycle.