Abstract/Overview This article describes vowel length in Olusuba. The objective of this study is to investigate sources of vowel length in Olusuba. Data for this study was collected from a secondary source: Dholuo translation of Olusuba. A word list was generated and presented to native speakers of Olusuba who were instructed to read it loud while being recorded. The recorded data was then played back for phonetic transcription. Using a descriptive research design and basing on data gener...
Abstract/Overview Vowel hiatus is a prohibited configuration of vowels in many languages of the world. This study is established to examine strategies used to resolve vowel hiatus in Olusuba, a Bantu language spoken in parts of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT). The work describes two vowel processes used as hiatus resolution strategies in Olusuba. Well-formedness of data obtained in this study are analysed using OT. The theory explains how constra...
Abstract/Overview The phrase is a significant unit of analysis in the grammar of any language. It is not only studied at the syntactic level but also at other levels of analysis-phonology, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics. Different types of phrases have been identified and described in the grammar of English and other languages. However, the noun and verb phrases are the most important and widely described phrases given that the structure of many languages revolves around the noun a...
Abstract/Overview As a result of the necessity to revitalize languages that have shown clear signs of endangerment, several proposals have been put forward by various studies (Paulston, 1994; Yamamoto, 1998; Landweer, 1998; Crystal, 2000; Hinton and Hale, 2001; Tsunoda, 2005; UNESCO, 2003; and Grenoble and Whaley, 2006), all of which appear to agree with Fishman (1991) on the centrality of the community whose language is endangered in leading the advocacy for the revival. Some other studi...
Abstract/Overview There seems to be no end to the debate about whether textese positively or negatively affects writing skills of high school learners of English. For instance, Carrington (2005:171) observes that “text messaging „infects‟ Standard English…leading to lower scores on written examinations”. Plester, Wood and Joshi (2009) similarly found evidence that text literacy is positively associated with Standard English literacy. However, Crystal (2008:157) does not just dis...