Morphology and semantics of proper names in Northern Sotho

Mojapelo, Mampaka L.

doi:10.1080/02572117.2009.10587328

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These results are not unique among the Luhya alone. The prefixation process has been reported among other African languages whose toponyms have the trait of locative prefixes such as Sotho {Ga} (GaDikgale), Nguni {Kwa} (KwaMashu), Venda {Ha} (Hamasia) and Tsonga {eKa} (eKa Mhinga) (Mojapelo, 2009).…”

Section: Morpho-syntactic Analysis Of Selected Luhya Place Namesmentioning

confidence: 94%

A morphosyntactic and semantic analysis of toponyms among the Luhya: A case of Bungoma County

Mandillah

2022

JLLLS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Onomastics,the study of names has remained an area of marginal significance in research despite its importance in language studies. This paper conducts a morphosyntactic and semantic analysis of toponymns (place names) among the Luhya group of speakers in Western Kenya, Bungoma County. A structural and functional approach is used to analyse the naming patterns with the idea that African names, as signs of language, can be divided into two morpho-syntactic categories:nominal that is, they constitute single words, or syntagmatic, meaning they are made up of sentences or phrases. Purposively sampled thirty place names are selected from the IEBC inventory and nine key respondents from the nine sub counties. The 30 names are subjected to morpho-syntactic analysis whereas the semi-structured interviews are used to elicit data on etimology and meaning of names from the nine respondents within the framework of the Frame Semantic theory by Fillmore, (Fillmore, 1982). The theory is used to ascertain whether the meaning-making elements in the respective toponymns reflect the historical functions and meanings embedded within the names.The findings reveal that Luhya place names are generated through grammatical rules as a result of word transformations. Such names are generated from nominals and their resulting phrases through derivational morphology.Three word formation processes namely, pre-fixation, compounding and borrowing are exhibited in the naming process. Semantically, the study reveals that Luhya place names are transparent and descriptive in terms of their function. Places are named after topographical features, historical events, climatic conditions and prominent people.

show abstract

Section: Morpho-syntactic Analysis Of Selected Luhya Place Namesmentioning

confidence: 94%

A morphosyntactic and semantic analysis of toponyms among the Luhya: A case of Bungoma County

Mandillah

2022

JLLLS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One challenging aspect of bilingual dictionaries that have been developed from an English word list and translated to a language like isiZulu are the ad- jectives. Their equivalent in the Bantu languages are the qualificatives, which "straddle a number of morphosyntactic categories" (Mojapelo 2014). This means that their use in example sentences are even more often subject to the kind of morphosyntactic variation seen in Table 1.…”

Section: Dealing With Qualificativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing Children’s Dictionaries to Digital Life

Wilken,

Marais

2024

JDHASA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

South Africa is facing a literacy crisis, with the latest PIRLS results showing that 8 out of 10 learners cannot read for basic comprehension by the time they leave the foundation phase. In this climate, the development of strategies to assist educators in harnessing the available resources to maximum effect is needed. However, most teaching resources are not digitally available, and even fewer are available in formats that make them readily available for use in natural language applications.The Ngiyaqonda! project aims to provide an interactive, multimodal digital environment within which learners can practise their reading and writing skills. Computational grammars and speech technology are combined in a mobile application to facilitate the transition from oral competency in a language to written competency. In this paper, we show how words from a multilingual dictionary for foundation phase learners can be brought to digital life within the Ngiyaqonda! application to enhance the learning experience of core concepts and vocabulary.We use the official foundation phase CAPS English-isiZulu dictionary (Mbatha et al. 2018) to ensure that the content of the computational grammars is aligned with relevant learning outcomes. The result is a fully parallel, multilingual computational grammar that is aligned at the semantic level, ready to be included in the Ngiyaqonda! application.

show abstract

“…In South Africa, Mojapelo (2009), Raper and Möller (2015) and Möller (2018) investigated PNs. Mojapelo (2009) examined the morphological aspects of Sesotho PNs and found that Sesotho PNs are morphologically grouped into four: those without locative markers, those with the prefix ga-, those with the prefix bo-, and those with the suffix -ng. The author also explains that Sesotho PNs result from affixation, compounding, and reduplication processes.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…nature and meanings of PNs (Kalkanova, 1999;Nash, 2013;Nicolaisen, 1993;Schotsman, 2003;Yonazi, 2014;Zeini et al, 2018) or the history of PNs (e.g. Dalby, 1984;Schotsman, 2003) while a few have studied the morphology of PNs and the processes involved in their formation (Anindo, 2016;Buberwa, 2016;Mandillah, 2022;Mojapelo, 2009). As earlier said, studies on PNs involving Tanzanian languages (Sukuma included) are scanty.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A morphological analysis of Sukuma place names: A case of primary school names in Shinyanga, Tanzania

Shigini

2023

JLLLS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Place names are vital language forms as they are entrenched with data about their ethnic origins. They are crucial linguistic, historical, geographical, and socio-cultural data sources. A growing body of evidence suggests that place names have been studied mainly from a semantic standpoint. Studies focusing on the morphological analysis of place names are limited. This denies onomasticians access to knowledge regarding the structures and processes forming place names in many languages. This paper examines the morphological aspects of Sukuma place names, mainly names of primary schools in Shinyanga Rural District, Shinyanga Region, Tanzania, to uncover their underlying structural patterns and the word-formation processes. The data for this study were 125 names of primary schools found in the Shinyanga Rural District, collected through the documentary review method. The collected names were subjected to morphological analysis by decomposing them into constituent morphemes to establish their structures and word formation processes. The findings indicate that Sukuma place names minimally consist of a noun or verb stem, though most are composed of a prefix and a noun or verb stem. The study further establishes that Sukuma speakers use inflection, derivation, and compounding strategies to form place names. The results of this study support the view that names, like other words in a language, have elaborate linguistic structures that can be analysed morphologically. It is concluded that the structure of place names is as significant as the motivational factors for place naming in determining or contributing to the meaning of a place name.

show abstract

Morphology and semantics of proper names in Northern Sotho

Cited by 6 publications

References 5 publications

A morphosyntactic and semantic analysis of toponyms among the Luhya: A case of Bungoma County

A morphosyntactic and semantic analysis of toponyms among the Luhya: A case of Bungoma County

Bringing Children’s Dictionaries to Digital Life

A morphological analysis of Sukuma place names: A case of primary school names in Shinyanga, Tanzania

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About