A Study of Vowel Adaptation in Kanuri Loanwords in Pabər/Bura

Abstract: The paper focuses on identifying and studying those linguistic items borrowed from the Kanuri to Pabǝr/Bura language with special attention to the modifications made to the vowels of the source language (Kanuri) before incorporating the loanwords into the target language (Pabǝr/Bura). It is believed that in as much as two or more communities with different linguistic backgrounds came in contact with one another; there is a tendency that linguistic borrowing will take place. Therefore, even though the languages under study belong to different language phyla, there exists linguistic borrowing between them. Because of this, the paper specifically focuses its attention on the adaptation of vowels in borrowed words. The research can establish that the target language (Pabǝr/Bura) employed various phonological processes in incorporating the loan words. More so vowel substitution is found to be the major technique used by the target language in incorporating the borrowed words. However, there are also cases of vowel deletion and insertion. The research employed two distinct sources as methods of data collection. These sources are primary and secondary. The primary source includes unobtrusive observation when discourse is taking place in Pabǝr/Bura language and listening to Pabǝr/Bura radio program broadcast by Yobe Broadcasting Corporation, Damaturu. Similarly, the researchers’ intuition plays a significant role in identifying the loanwords. On the other hand, secondary sources include written records, such as journal articles, dissertations, theses, dictionaries, etc. The paper concludes that Pabǝr/Bura borrowed a good number of lexical items from Kanuri, a Nilo-Saharan language.