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Accepted Paper:
Modern faiths and the Yoruba language: reconfiguration of the Yoruba lexicon
Ayodele Yusuff
(University of Lagos, Nigeria)
Paper long abstract:
Modern faiths and the Yoruba language: Reconfiguration of the Yoruba Lexicon
Luqman Ayodele YUSUFF
yoyussuf@yahoo.co.uk; ayusuff@unilag.edu.ng
Language mirrors culture; and belief systems are part of culture. The advent of modern faiths has systematically affected the use of the Yoruba language in its attempt to serve its purpose of propagation in the modern religions (Christianity and Islam) discourse, especially to non-literate adherents who are not proficient in the English and Arabic languages which are respectively the languages in which the faiths are proclaimed. Conversely, the Yoruba language is affected resulting to reduction in the use of lexical items relating to indigenous faiths. The same fate has bedeviled the Yoruba personal naming system where names whose morphological structures are Yoruba, have meanings that reflect modern faiths sensibilities. However, names with indigenous faiths connotations are no longer given to children at birth. Rather, we have reminiscences of them as surnames. Woefully, in most cases, modern faiths adherents even change or adjust their family names to further distance themselves from indigenous faiths. Using the Lexicalists' theory of Generative Morphology, this paper interrogates these issues and presents the lexical additions and percolations as well as semantic maneuvers, inclusive of names, culminating in the contemporary Yoruba lexicon.
Language issues: reconfiguring language use in African studies [initiated by the Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, University of Lagos, with Africa Multiple Centre of Excellence, Bayreuth]
Session 1