English-induced Semantic Expansion in Swahili

Abstract

Equivalent lexical terms in different languages rarely match in all their shades of meanings. For example, a lexical term, which is a polyseme in language A, is not necessarily a polyseme in language B with which it is in contact. However, this study reports a context where equivalents in different languages influence each other’s scopes of meaning in a multilingual context. This corpus analysis reveals that a sizeable number of Swahili monosemes have changed to polysemes in emulating English polysemous equivalents with which they are in contact. The analysis reveals that this powerful language-induced meaning expansion starts in less formal media, such as the press, before spreading to formal media, such as the dictionary and the book.