Dialectal variation in lexical borrowings in Dangme

This paper investigated dialectal variation in lexical borrowings in Dangme, a language spoken in Southern Ghana. Dangme has seven dialects (Ada, Gbugblaa, Yilɔ Krobo, Manya Krobo, Nugo, Sɛ and Osudoku), but this study concerns lexical borrowings into the first four. The language is in contact with four languages from which it has borrowed: Ewe, Ga, Akan, and English. Each dialect of Dangme is in direct contact with English, the official language of Ghana, and with at least one of the three Ghanaian languages. While Ada is in contact with Ewe and Gbugblaa with Ga, both Yilɔ Krobo and Manya Krobo are in contact with Akan and, to some extent, Ewe. The study departed from focus on the phonological adaptation of borrowed words, the subject matter of previous studies, to pursue two interrelated objectives, i.e., to find out: (i) whether, and to what extent, borrowings into a dialect from a given source language remain localized or are transferred to the other dialects and (ii) whether, and what extent, the lexical borrowings constitute additions to the Dangme lexicon or, conversely, a relexification of native words in the lexicon. Eighty (80) respondents, 20 each from the four dialects considered, were purposively sampled to participate in the data collection process and the data analysis was done within the Variationist Sociolinguistics Theory. It was found that while most Akan and English lexical borrowings have become integrated in all the four dialects of Dangme, this is not the case with lexical borrowings from Ga and Ewe. Most Ga borrowings are found only in Gbugblaa and most Ewe borrowings are found only in Ada and, to some extent, Manya Krobo. It was also found that Akan and English lexical borrowings generally constitute additions to the Dangme lexicon while Ewe and Ga lexical borrowings may be seen as subtractive borrowings or cases of relexification in Ada and Gbugblaa respectively. The study is expected to contribute to an understanding of how languages like Dangme whose dialects have geographical contact with different languages develop dialectal variation.