Table of Contents
Citation: Grema, M. (2024). Nativazation of Hausa Loanwords in Kanuri through Deglottalization and Sonorization. Tasambo Journal of Language, Literature, and Culture, 3(1), 45-51. www.doi.org/10.36349/tjllc.2024.v03i01.006.
Nativazation of Hausa Loanwords in Kanuri through Deglottalization and Sonorization
Musa Grema
Department of
Languages and Linguistics,
Yobe State
University,
KM7, Gujba Road
Damaturu, Yobe State
GSM: +2348067273233
gremamusa2012@gmail.com
Abstract
The paper attempts to identify and study those linguistic
items borrowed from Hausa to Kanuri language with special attentions to the
deglottalization and sonorization processes employed in incorporating the loanwords.
Borrowing is a phenomenon which is as old as human social, economic, and
administrative contact. When a contact is established between two or more
different linguistic communities, there is the tendency for linguistic
borrowing to take place. Therefore, despite the fact that Hausa belongs to Chadic
family and Kanuri belongs to Nilo-Sahara, there exists linguistic borrowing
between them. The paper focuses on the deglottalization and sonorization in
nativazation of the borrowed words. The
research sought data from two sources. These sources are primary and secondary.
The primary source includes unobtrusive observation when discourse is taking
place in Kanuri language. Similarly, the researcher’s intuition plays
significant role in identifying the loanwords being a native speaker of the
language. On the other hand, the secondary sources include written records,
such as journal articles, dissertations, thesis, dictionaries etc. The paper concludes that Kanuri, a
Nilo-Saharan language uses deglottalization and sonorization in nativazation of
some Hausa borrowed lexical items. This resulted in making the loanwords to
behave like the native words of the target language (Kanuri).
Keywords:
Loanwords, Nativization,
Deglottalization, Consonant and Sonorization
Introduction
Despite the fact that it is not easy to find a universally
accepted definition of borrowing, the paper makes an attempt to review some
definitions put forward by different scholars. Let’s begin with Haugen (1950,
p. 212), that views linguistic borrowing
as “the attempted reproduction in one language of patterns previously found in
another”. On the other hand, Thomason
and Kaufman (1988, p. 37) consider it as the incorporation of foreign features
into a group's native language by speakers of that language; the native
language is maintained but is changed by the addition of the incorporated
features.
In the words of
Bussmann (1998, p. 139) borrowing is seen as adoption of linguistic expressions
(which can be lexical item, phrase or both) from one language into another,
usually in a situation when no term exists for the new object, concept or state
of affairs. Similarly, Yul-Ifode (2001) cited in Nneji and Uzoigwe (2013, p. 9)
maintains that, the concept of borrowing simply means an aspect of lexical
change. However, this process involves adding new items to a language or
dialect by taking them from another language or dialect. From these, therefore,
it can be seen as a one of the linguistic processes that improves the lexicon
of the language. It can also be deduce
d
that there is tendency
where a borrowing can take place even within different dialects of the same
language.
Turning to the
languages under study; both Hausa and Kanuri are African languages which are
spoken as mother tongues and second languages by huge number of people.
According to Greenberg (1966) Hausa is a member of the Chadic languages which
belongs to the Afro-Asiatic phylum, while Kanuri is classified as a member of
the Saharan branch which belongs to the Nilo-Saharan phylum. Both Hausa and
Kanuri have geographical and social dialects. Despite the fact that Hausa and
Kanuri belong to different language phyla, there exist borrowings of linguistic
item(s) between them, because there is contact between the speakers of the
languages for several decades.
Lohr, Ekkehard & Awagana (2009) assert that it is assume
that Chadic languages may have had a long history of geographical neighborhood
with different languages which belong to different language phyla. They are
neighbor
to Benue-Congo languages to the south and west, it is also
established that they are
neighbor
to Saharan
languages to the east and north.
Therefore,
the paper focuses
on the deglottalization and sonorization as a means of nativazation of Hausa
loanwords in Kanuri.
Similarly, it is
clear that both Hausa and Kanuri are tonal languages. In view of this, in all
the examples used in this research low and fallen tones are marked, while high
tones are left unmarked. Similarly, long vowels are indicated by doubling the
concern
ed
vowel.
There is no doubt
that a lot of research has been conducted on phonological behaviour of Hausa
loanwords in Kanuri which include Lang (1923–1924), Baldi (1992, 1995),
Bulakarima (1999), Shettima & Abdullahi (2000), Lohr, Ekkehard &
Awagana (2009), Grema (2017) among others. However, to the best of my knowledge
none of the works mentioned dwelt so much on deglottalization and sonorization
as device of nativazation of Hausa loanwords in Kanuri. This pave
s
a way to the present research in order to breach the
academic gap left.
Brief Account of Contact between Hausa and Kanuri
The relationship
between Hausas and Kanuris began well before the fifteenth century during the
reign of Mai Ibrahim B. Uthman, as a result of military encounter.
At that time Hausa
must have played some role as a commercial lingua franca in the Hausa states
which are geographically adjacent to the west of Borno. Similarly
,
intermarriage might also play a little role couple with the
situation where both speakers of the languages share the same common impact of
Arabo-Islamic culture and urban medieval civilization on the other hand.
Bilingualism also played a major role which becomes more widespread in the
recent contact which began during the colonial period and Hausa became the
dominant lingua franca of northern Nigeria.
Apart from the military encounter between Hausa States
and Kanem Borno, there were also other forms of relationship that existed
between them. One of such relationships was the arrival of a very powerful
Bornoan immigrant to the city of Kano during the reign of Sarkin Kano Dauda
ɗ
an Kanajeji in the fifteenth century (Usman, 1983 and
Lohr, Ekkehard
& Awagana 2009
).
Similarly, during the reign of Sarkin Kano Muhammadu
Kisauki, another group of immigrants from Borno came to Kano under the
leadership of ‘Goron Duma’. This group of immigrants settled near ‘Kurmi’
market. The migrations of learned men from Borno were also witnessed in Zazzau
and Katsina
(Usman, 1983
)
.
Amongst the factors that encourage travels and
relationships between Hausa States and Borno were environment and economy. They
buy and sell commodities from one another. Potash, salt, hides and skin were
among the items of trade between them. Usman (1983) also adds that Borno was
regarded as a major source of horses supply to Hausa states.
In view of these, one would understand that there has
been a relationship between the Hausa and Kanuri speakers for many centuries.
To further buttress this point, Brann (1998) states that it is likely that some
Hausa pilgrims, traders and scholars came to Ngazargamu and later to Kukawa on
their way to the Holy city of Mecca, and some of them subsequently settled
there.
This indicates that,
there was much contact between the Hausas and the Kanuris and eventually the
Kanuris adopted the Hausa language and much of their culture. This has
contributed immensely to the considerable regional homogeneity found in the
northern states of Nigeria today. It is also worth mentioning that
after independence
of Nigeria and Niger, which are considered as dominant areas of Hausa and
Kanuri speakers, Hausa gained considerable dominance in the spheres of
commercial activities, politics and administration, education, and the media.
Methodology and Model of Approach
Going by the nature of this research it is regarded as
qualitative and synchronic since it focuses on the study of nativazation of
Hausa loanwords in Kanuri through deglottalization and sonorization. The
research work sourced its data through two different sources; namely primary
and secondary. The primary source involved unobtrusive observation by the
researcher. The researcher’s intuition is also of great importance in gathering
the data from the field. Written records such as journal articles, thesis, dissertations
and dictionaries are used as secondary sources of data. Similarly, in the
process of gathering the data many Hausa loanwords in Kanuri are identified but
only those that are relevant to the present research are used as examples. More
so, the paper adopts Yalwa (1992) as a model of approach. Having said that,
let’s briefly look at how he approach the issue phonologically. Therefore,
Yalwa (1992) reveals that, Hausa people borrowed a lot of Arabic words from
Arabs through trade and the religion of Islam.
He succeeded in
discussing the phonological evidence of Arabic loans in Hausa. He observed that
in some of the Arabic loans in Hausa there are cases where Arabic /f/ is
sometimes realized as /b/ intervocalically, word finally or after semi vowel
followed by another vowel in Hausa. But this change does not apply to the most
recently Arabic loans in Hausa. The following examples are provided:
ARABIC
|
HAUSA
|
GLOSS
|
al-kìtàab |
littaafîi
|
book |
al-Gayb |
lâifii/aibìi |
fault |
He also presented
the following general rule to account for this change.
Ar: b > H: f/
[v – v]; [v
-
#]; [G – V] or [G – C]
He further raises
the issues of neutralization, voicing, glottalization, vowel lengthening and
shortening processes in the process of nativization of Arabic loans in Hausa.
He clearly states that velar consonants are palatalized before front vowels and
labialized before back vowels. In some Arabic loans in Hausa the vowel /o/
changes to schwa /
ə
/ which is
regarded as morphophonemic. He provides this example:
ARABIC
|
HAUSA
|
GLOSS
|
al-kohl |
kwâllii
[kw
ə
llii] |
antimony
chloride |
There is also what
he terms as split process where a single sound in Arabic changes to other
sounds in Hausa in the process of borrowing, he cites many instances of such
phenomenon. For instance,
Arabic
/s/ -
Hausa s, š/ [#.....] or [V] #
[-low]
[-back]
The
following examples are also provided:
ARABIC
|
HAUSA
|
GLOSS
|
saba’in |
sàbà’in |
seventy |
nafs
(soul) |
numfaashii |
breath,
breathing, soul |
Finally Yalwa
(1992) states that among the Arabic laryngeals and pharyngeals Hausa has only
/h/. Therefore, where Arabic /h/ or /x/ occurs it is only realized as /h/ in
Hausa. The Arabic /
ʕ
/ is changed to
glottal stop /
ʔ
/ in Hausa even
though it is believed to have been borrowed from Arabic. But according to him
there are some instances where the sound /
ʕ
/ or /
ʔ
/ is replaced with /w/ consider this example
ʔ
allaf > wallàfaa (to compose/publish a book/paper/poem).
Thus, this paper will adopt the model of approach of
Yalwa (1992) as mentioned earlier.
Data Presentation and Analysis
In this section of
the paper, the data collected for the research is presented and analyzed. Thus,
an explanation is going to be presented on how Kanuri language deglottalized
and sonorized some segments in the process of incorporation of Hausa loanwords.
Deglottalization
The phenomenon of replacing a segment of the source
language with another segment in the target language is highly productive in
linguistic borrowing. When a borrowed word contains a phoneme which is absent
in the target language, it is usually replaced with a close
correspondence. This act paves way to
various phonological processes to take place, among which is Deglottalization.
Hausa has nine (9) glottalized consonantal sounds out of which only one (1) is
found to be existing in Kanuri language; namely glottal, stop (/
ʔ
/). Glottalized phonemes in the Hausa words loaned
into Kanuri are deglottalized in order to suit into the phonological system of
the target language. As a result
[
ɓ
]
>
[
b
]
,
[
ƙ
]
>
[k], [
ƙ
w] > [kw]/, [
ɗ
] > [d], [’y] > [y] and [s’] > [s]. Let us
consider the following examples:
Example 1:
(a) |
Hausa
|
Kanuri
|
Gloss
|
ɓ
àrnaa |
/bànna/ [bànna] |
spoilage/damage |
Let us formulate rules for the above examples, as follows:
Rule 1: Deglottalization Rule
1a:
Rule 1a converts glottalized bilabial implosive /v/ into nonglottalized bilabial stop [b] before a vowel in the borrowed word, as in example (1a). In this case the phenomenon takes place word initially. However, base d on the data collected for the research , this is the only example found, there are also other instances where only one example is found, which can be seen later. Apart from the deglottalization there is also a case of consonant substituiton where a consonant / r / in Hausa is subtituted with /n/ in Kanuri and vowel laxing as can be seen in the example above .
Example 2:
(a) |
Hausa
|
Kanuri
|
Gloss
|
ƙ
oosai |
/kosai/
[kwosai] |
bean cake |
|
(b) |
ƙ
uusàa |
/kusà/
[kwusà] |
rubber |
(c) |
dan
ƙ
òo |
/dankò/[dankò] |
rubber |
(d) |
ƙ
òo
ƙ
oo |
/kòko/ [kwòkwo] |
type of small calabash |
(e) |
ƙ
òo
ƙ
arii |
/kòkoli/[kwòkwoli] |
effort, try |
(f) |
ƙ
àn
ƙ
araa |
/kankara/[kankara] |
ice block |
Consider the below phonological rule for the above examples.
1b:
Turning to rule 1b, it accounts for the
conversion of the glottalized velar ejective /
ƙ
/ into nonglottalized
velar stop [k], as in examples (2a – f) respectively. However, in examples (2a
and b) the conversion takes place word initially while in example (2c) it takes
place word medially. More so, in examples (2d – f) the deglottalization takes
place word initially and medially. Thus, the phenomenon of deglottalization in
Hausa loanwords in Kanuri occur word initially and word medially as justified
by example 2 above.
E
x
ample
3:
(a) |
Hausa
|
Kanuri
|
Gloss
|
ɗ
an ciki |
/dankiki/
[dankjikji] |
inner wear |
Let us formulate a phonological rule to
capture the above deglottalization process.
1c:
Rule 1c above,
say
s voiced glottalized implosive /
ɗ
/
is realise as
nonglottalized
voiced alveolar stop [d] in word initial position before a vowel as seen in
example (3a).
Example 4:
(a) |
Hausa
|
Kanuri
|
Gloss
|
‘y
ar ciki |
/
j
arkiki/ [
j
arkjikji] |
inner wear |
This situation of deglottalization can be
represented through the below phonological rule.
1d:
Rule 1d on the other hand converts palatalized-glottal stop /’y/ into nonglottalized palatal approximant [j] word initially before a vowel as in example (4a).
E
x
ample
5:
(a) |
Hausa
|
Kanuri
|
Gloss
|
ts
àngayàa |
/sàngayà/
[sàngayà] |
qur’anic school |
|
(b) |
ts
aamiyaa
|
/samiya/ [samiya] |
a type of Hausa royal gown |
Let us formulate rules for the above
examples, as follows:
1e:
Rule 1e accounts for the conversion of voiceless alveolar
ejective /s’/ into voiceless alveolar fricative [s] word initially before a
vowel which is also a form of deglottalization, as in examples, (5a and b).
Sonorization
Chomsky and Halle (1968, p. 302) define sonorant as
“Sounds produced with a vocal tract cavity configuration in which spontaneous
voicing is possible.” In other words
,
Crystal (2008, p.
442) describes the word sonorant as one of the major class features of sounds produced distinctive feature
theory, in order to handle the variations in manner of articulation. Thus,
sonorants are sounds produced with a relatively free air-flow, and a vocal fold
position such that spontaneous voicing is possible as in vowels, liquids and
laterals. Based on the foregoing discussion one can describe sonorization as a
form of consonant weakening (lenition) where an obstruent is replaced with a
sonorant sound in a certain phonological environment. Abubakar (2008, p. 1)
observes that weakening in Kanuri language affects intervocalic non-nasal obstruent
automatically without any restriction and it is realized either through
assimilation or deletion process. Interestingly, in the case of Hausa loanwords
in Kanuri the phenomenon takes place inter-vocalically and the affected sounds
are either voiced stop or voiceless stop. This phonological observable fact is
considered as a regular and productive process in Kanuri. This phenomenon is
noticed as one of the processes involved in incorporating Hausa words loaned
into Kanuri, where /b/ and /k/ in the Hausa words are replaced with /w/ word
medially. In case of the former it can be seen in example 6a - i while the latter is evident in example 6j.
Consider the examples below:
Example 6:
(a) |
Hausa
|
Kanuri
|
Gloss
|
àyàbà |
/àyàwà/ [àyàwà] |
banana |
|
(b) |
dubuu
|
/duwu/ [duwu] |
one thousand |
(c) |
laabulee
|
/lawule/ [lawule] |
curtain |
(d) |
riibàa
|
/riwà/ [riwà] |
profit |
(e) |
taabàa
|
/tàwa/
[tàwa] |
tobacco/cigarette |
(f) |
kabàrii
|
/kawùrì/ [kawùrì] |
grave |
(g) |
kallabii
|
/kallawi/ [kallawi] |
head tie |
(h) |
tàttabàraa
|
/tàttawàr/ [tàttawàr] |
pigeon |
(i) |
kwalbaa
|
/kolwà/ [kwolwà] |
bottle |
(j) |
bàrkònoo
|
/bàrwùno/ [bàrwùno] |
chili pepper |
Let us formulate rules for the above example:
Rule 2: Sonorization Rule
Rule 2a converts voiced, bilabial, stop /b/ into bilabial
resonant [w] between two vowels in a word medial position as seen in examples (6a,
b, c, d, f, g and h). It also converts voiced, bilabial, stop /b/ into bilabial
resonant [w] between a consonant and vowel in a word medial position as seen in
examples (6i). Rule 2b converts voiceless velar stop /k/ into a semi vowel with
feature specification [+ lab] in between consonant and a vowel word medially as
in example (6j). Despite the fact that in the previous examples (6a – h) it is
[b] > [w] but in example (6i) one can notice that it is [k] > [w], this
phenomena is also form of consonant weakening. The weakening of bilabials and
velars intervocalically and post-liquid consonant environments is an automatic phenomenon
in Kanuri, consider example (6i and j). Thus, it is mandatory for the loanwords
to behave like the native Kanuri words before they are fully integrated in the
target language.
Conclusion
Based on the foregoing discussion, it is noticed and
established that Kanuri, a Saharan language and one of the African languages
borrowed some le
x
ical items from
Hausa, which is a Chadic Language and also one of the widely spoken languages
in Africa. An attempt is made to show
that, the borrowed words were absorbed into the phonological system of the
target language (Kanuri). In the process of incorporating the Hausa loanwords phonologically,
it is established that deglottalization and sonorization processes are
involved. In all
the examples cited glottalized phonemes are deglottalized. Voiced, bilabial
implosive [
ɓ
]
becomes voiced bilabial stop
[b]
and also voiceless, velar ejective
[
ƙ
]
becomes voiceless, velar stop
[k]
among others. In the same vein, a case of consonant weakening
which is considered as form of sonorization is also evident in incorporating
Hausa loanwords in Kanuri. In this situation a voiced, bilabial stop
[b]
becomes voiceless, velar approximant
[w]
and also voiceless, velar stop
[k]
becomes voiceless, velar approximant
[w]
.
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Appendix
Abbreviations, Sings and Symbols
Signs, Symbols and Abbreviations Used
+ → Positive
sign
→ → Becomes
[ ]
→ Square brackets enclose phonetic
features or symbol
/ / → Oblique strokes enclose base form or underlying representation of an element
## → Word
boundary
/ → in
the environment of
> →
Becomes
___ → Position/location
of input
{ }
→ Braces indicate choice
´ → High
tone
` → Low
tone
- → Negative
sign
ant → Anterior
C → Consonant
cons →
Consonantal segment
cont →
Continuant
del.rel →
Delayed Release
glot →
Glottality
lab → Labiality
pal → Palatality
syll →
Syllabic
V → Vowel
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