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BORROWING AS A MEANS OF LANGUAGE ENRICHMENT: A CASE STUDY OF C?LELA BORROWINGS FROM HAUSA LANGUAGE
Shehu Ladan and Mamuda Dahiru Tambuwal

ABSTRACT
This paper is an attempt to investigate borrowing as a means of language enrichment which specifically refers to a sociolinguistic situation in which a word or phrase which has been taken from one language is used in another language. Language borrowing as the paper investigate enhances the language existence to generate a large number of words as we have seen with C’lela, which has different variables of borrowing that the speech community engaged in. In order to fit in more lexical items into the language, such as loan word, loan blend and loan translation. Code switching is also another linguistic phenomenon that C’lela speakers engaged with one another in their conversations to show linguistic proficiency or difficulty in finding the right word for ideas outside traditional subject matters. Moreover, same time, it could be a factor affecting the choice of a variety of a language to suit a particular situation. The paper answers such questions like how did C’lela borrow lexical items from Hausa; what area of vocabulary are the borrowings eminent? What configuration changes did the borrowed vocabulary items undergo and how has the borrowing lead to the overall development of C’lela language?


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