Abstract
The borrowing of lexical itemsas one of the outcomes of languages in contact may affect a speaker’s communicability with other speakers of the same language in differentsettings.In this perspective, thisstudy investigated lexical borrowing in spoken Lukabaras in Chepsaita Scheme. The languages spoken in this setting include Lutachooni,Luwanga, Lulogooli, Lubukusu, Lukabarasand the native Nandi. In view of this multilingual setting,this study investigatedthe influence of the nativeNandi languageon spoken Lukabaras.There wasneed to establish the impactof Lukabaras speakers borrowing lexical items from Nandi in the home and business domainsof interaction. The study’sspecific objectiveswere: to identifyand describelexical items borrowed inspoken Lukabaras from Nandi language, to determine the relationship betweenage,gender and linguistic environmentand lexical borrowing in spoken Lukabaras and to analyze the morpho-phonemicprocesses involved in the lexical items borrowed inspoken Lukabaras from Nandi. The study applied Borrowing Transfer Theory(Odlin, 1989)which postulates that there is transfer of linguisticmaterialwhen languages come in contact.This theory was complemented withtheGenerative Morphological Theory (Bochner, 1992)which argues that a native speaker has tacit knowledge of their grammar that enables them to come up withwell-formed words. The research design for the study was descriptive. The studycollected data from Lukabaras and Nandi speakers in ChepsaitaScheme.The Nandiwere included to verify the authenticity of thewordsborrowed from their language.The study thus used a total of forty-eight respondents selectedusing purposive and snow balling sampling techniques. The units of analysis comprised a corpus of400 recorded lexical items (nouns and verbs)from which 120lexical items were transcribed then through systematic random sampling40words picked for analysis. Theinstruments of data collection included audio recording of lexical items and Focus Group Discussionguide. To ascertain the Validity and reliability of the instruments, a pilot study was carried outin Chepsaita Scheme.The study used content analysis to describe the data by identifying themes that emerged from the findings. Thestudy established that there was lexical borrowing in spoken Lukabarasin Chepsaita Scheme. Therewas also a relationship between a Lukabaras speaker’s age, gender and linguistic environment and the lexical items they borrowed from the Nandi language. Theborrowed words were morpho-phonemically adapted through derivation, vowelharmony, palatalization,vowel deletionand vowel epenthesis. Theborrowing was a communication strategy employed by Lukabaras speakers to coexist with Nandispeakers.However, this borrowingimpeded comprehensibility with native Lukabaras speakers. The studyis significant since itcontributesto the available literature onLukabaras and Nandi asKenyan indigenous languages. Thisunderscoresthe need for these languages to coexist in harmonyfor national cohesionas contemplatedin chapter one of the Kenyan constitution.