Established French loanwords in Sango - A pilot study
(1995) In Working Papers, Lund University, Dept. of Linguistics 44.- Abstract
- This study is an initial attempt to describe the established French loanwords in the lingua franca Sango, which is the main language spoken in the Central African Republic (CAR). It is a second language for the majority of the population of 3 million people for whom a great number of vernaculars serve as first languages. French loanwords in Sango are prompted by the contact between Sango and French which has occurred over the past century. Loanwords form an integral part of the recipient language. In the present study, the loanwords integrated both with regard to form and meaning will be focused on. These are characterized by stability, both diachronic and synchronic, and linguistic adaptation. Diachronic stability is suggested by, for... (More)
- This study is an initial attempt to describe the established French loanwords in the lingua franca Sango, which is the main language spoken in the Central African Republic (CAR). It is a second language for the majority of the population of 3 million people for whom a great number of vernaculars serve as first languages. French loanwords in Sango are prompted by the contact between Sango and French which has occurred over the past century. Loanwords form an integral part of the recipient language. In the present study, the loanwords integrated both with regard to form and meaning will be focused on. These are characterized by stability, both diachronic and synchronic, and linguistic adaptation. Diachronic stability is suggested by, for instance, Haugen 1950 as being an important criterion for the establishment of loanwords, and synchronic stability by Weinreich 1968, whereas linguistic adaptation is a widely recognized criterion for loanwords. The established loanwords will further be described with regard to word classes, semantic domains and functions. The present study is based on part of a tape-recorded corpus. The original corpus consists of approximately 65 hours of tape-recorded speech, representing various discourse types. 120 informants have contributed to the corpus. The recordings were made in 1990-1991 in the western part of the CAR. For the present purpose, I restrict the study to approximately 4,000 running items involving 500 running words from interviews and conversations with four women between 19-33, with different sociolinguistic backgrounds. For the diachronic aspect of loanwords, sources from 1908 to 1978 have been consulted. Furthermore, observations are made on the basis of my total stay of
eleven years, working with among other things literacy and book publishing in the CAR, and my knowledge of Sango cquired during this period. Before commencing the description of loanwords, some sociolinguistic and linguistic aspects of Sango will be presented to explain the motivations for
French loanwords in Sango (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/528859
- author
- Thornell, Christina
- publishing date
- 1995
- type
- Working paper/Preprint
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Working Papers, Lund University, Dept. of Linguistics
- volume
- 44
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- no
- id
- 6eda72be-debc-4252-a203-0d1777353636 (old id 528859)
- alternative location
- http://www.ling.lu.se/disseminations/pdf/44/Thornell.pdf
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-04 13:46:58
- date last changed
- 2018-11-21 21:16:17
@misc{6eda72be-debc-4252-a203-0d1777353636,
abstract = {{This study is an initial attempt to describe the established French loanwords in the lingua franca Sango, which is the main language spoken in the Central African Republic (CAR). It is a second language for the majority of the population of 3 million people for whom a great number of vernaculars serve as first languages. French loanwords in Sango are prompted by the contact between Sango and French which has occurred over the past century. Loanwords form an integral part of the recipient language. In the present study, the loanwords integrated both with regard to form and meaning will be focused on. These are characterized by stability, both diachronic and synchronic, and linguistic adaptation. Diachronic stability is suggested by, for instance, Haugen 1950 as being an important criterion for the establishment of loanwords, and synchronic stability by Weinreich 1968, whereas linguistic adaptation is a widely recognized criterion for loanwords. The established loanwords will further be described with regard to word classes, semantic domains and functions. The present study is based on part of a tape-recorded corpus. The original corpus consists of approximately 65 hours of tape-recorded speech, representing various discourse types. 120 informants have contributed to the corpus. The recordings were made in 1990-1991 in the western part of the CAR. For the present purpose, I restrict the study to approximately 4,000 running items involving 500 running words from interviews and conversations with four women between 19-33, with different sociolinguistic backgrounds. For the diachronic aspect of loanwords, sources from 1908 to 1978 have been consulted. Furthermore, observations are made on the basis of my total stay of<br/><br>
eleven years, working with among other things literacy and book publishing in the CAR, and my knowledge of Sango cquired during this period. Before commencing the description of loanwords, some sociolinguistic and linguistic aspects of Sango will be presented to explain the motivations for<br/><br>
French loanwords in Sango}},
author = {{Thornell, Christina}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Working Paper}},
series = {{Working Papers, Lund University, Dept. of Linguistics}},
title = {{Established French loanwords in Sango - A pilot study}},
url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/6203766/624495.pdf}},
volume = {{44}},
year = {{1995}},
}