Morphophonological Adaptations of Hausa loan words in the Gworok Language

Abstract: when two or more languages come in contact, there are a lot oflinguistic consequences; one of which is linguistic borrowing. The present studyexamines the effect of the contact between Hausa (Chadic, Afro-Asiantic) andGworok (Genus Benue-Congo-Plateau, Niger-Congo).Preliminary investigationsshow that a large chunk of Gworok lexical forms is borrowed from the Hausalanguage. Thus, the contact between these languages has given rise to the loaning ofHausa words into the Gworok language. These words undergo morphophonologicalchanges as expected. Thus, this study will examine the processes employed in suchmodification. Also, the continuous usage of these Hausa loan words has resulted incode mixing and switching during conversations as well as a language shift towardsthe Hausa language by the native speakers of Gworok. The data for the study wereelicited from the conversation of native speakers, and the data was analyzed usingthe descriptive method.