SYNTACTIC CATEGORIES AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH LEXEMES USED AS CHRISTIAN NAMES IN NORTHERN NIGERIAN
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Date
2019
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The English Language Unit, University of Agriculture, Makurdi.
Abstract
Onomastics is a linguistic enquiry interested in the exploration of origin, linguistic forms and functionality of personal names. However, little attention has been given to the investigation of naming practices among Christians. This study therefore aims at applying the generativists’ notion of binary features and the concept of Semantic Prosody to investigate the syntactic and semantic properties of selected English lexemes used as Christian baby names in the Northern Nigeria. To achieve this aim, the study attempts to: classify the selected data into grammatical categories in order to discover the syntactic device used for naming system; explore the semantic prosodic features of the selected lexemes with a view to discovering the attitudinal factor underlying their choices; investigate how gender distinction is attached to common words; and, discover the lexical innovations in the selected words. The study demonstrated that the device of functional shift (word class conversion) was predominantly used for naming. Also, words with positive semantic prosodic feature were used to encode religious, cultural and philosophical thoughts of name-givers. It was discovered that both masculine and feminine gender qualities were attributed to neutral words. Also, abstract words were assigned human (concrete) referents. On the basis of these findings, it was concluded that the English words used among the Northern Nigerian Christian naming system have been re-contextualised from common everyday words to proper names, thereby constituting a lexical set or special vocabulary of Christendom in Nigeria.
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Olaleye, J. I., & Dahunsi, T. N. (2019). Syntactic categories and semantic features of English lexemes used as Christian names in Norther Nigeria. The Journal of Communicative English, Vol 21.