On the semantics of Northern Sotho adoptives

Abstract

This article presents a study of adoptives (borrowed words) in Northern Sotho, with special reference to words that have either changed meaning or shifted away from the denotations of their English/Afrikaans original. It serves as a description of Northern Sotho adoptives, explaining how their meanings have changed from what they originally were in Afrikaans and/or English. To achieve this goal, the researcher uses a qualitative method; the data for this study was selected from both oral and printed sources of the Northern Sotho language. The researcher, a native speaker of Northern Sotho, had the opportunity to make frequent contact with young and old people from different areas. These people belonged to various socio-economic sections of the community and had different educational backgrounds. The principles of semantic field theory postulated by Kittay in 1987 are applied in an attempt to describe and categorise some of the types of semantic changes that occur in the Northern Sotho adoptives. The results show that while few of the Northern Sotho adoptives have retained the same meaning as their original source language, many have changed semantically. The meanings of some adoptives have been narrowed, some broadened, while others have had their meanings radically shifted.