Word Formation Processes in Nigerian Short-Message Service
Chapter One
Objectives of the Study
The singular goal of this study is to explore the various processes employed by Nigerian Short-Message Service (SMS) writers in generating new words, by critically sampling and analyzing some of these new words to see the processes employed by these GSM users.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
WORD FORMATION PROCESSES: AN OVERVIEW
A word-formation process may be either or all about the following: a way in which an entirely new word comes into a language and/or a way in which a speaker creates complex words from already existing simpler word(s). In line with this view, Lieb (2013) defines word formation as forming new lexical words from already existing words using a word-formation process.
Bryson (1990) cited in Peña (2010) identifies six ways of creating new words which include: by adding to them, by subtracting from them, by making them up, by doing nothing to them, by borrowing from other languages and by mistake. This paper is not interested in the mechanism of doing nothing to them because it is an aspect of historical semantics.
Moreover, in addition to the six mechanisms identified by Bryson (1990), Peña (2010) adds another which is: by combining them. Peña (2010) further explains that when we talk of adding to existing words, we mean the use of processes like derivation and compounding. Scholars like Peña (2010); Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams (2011); Aronoff and Fudeman (2008); etc posit that derivation and compounding are the more productive ways of adding new words into English. Subtracting from them refers to word formation process as clipping; then borrowing and mistake refer to backformation or misspelling while combining them has to do with acronyms and blending or portmanteaus.
Peña (2010) asserts that blending is a word formation process that involves the removing and joining of residues of two or more words in order to create a new word that has form and meaning, which have resemblance with the source words. The meanings and sounds of the two words combined; and the combination may or may not be in their full forms. Little wonder, Gries (2006) and Aronoff and Fudeman (2008) while observing that blending is a highly creative word-formation process explain that this is so, because it is a process that does not adhere to any specific productive rule. In the same vein, Bauer (1983) opines that the blender is actually free to take either as little or as much as he deems necessary to form a blend. Consequently, one can rightly say that blending is the most unpredictable process of word formation.
Peña (2010) also defines borrowing as a process that involves the copying of a word from one language (to which it originally belongs) to another. For there to be a case of borrowing, the two languages involved must have come in contact with each other. Borrowed words often do not remain the way they are in the original/source language. However, they are modified to adhere to the phonological, morphological and syntactic patterns of the borrowing language. Languages that are in contact with one another tend to take-on terms they lack from each other.
In the case of compounding, Olsen (2007) calls the process of forming compounds, composition and posits that two stems from the vocabulary are combined to form a new word. On the other hand, Katić (2013) notes that initialisms and acronyms are shortenings which are derived from the initial letters in a phrase or name, explaining that while acronyms are pronounced as “single words” (NASA, AIDS), initialisms are pronounced “as a sequence of letters” (DNA, USA). The difference between these two types lies in how the resulting word is pronounced in spoken language, namely letter by letter or without intermission, (p. 3).
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Design
This study is a descriptive survey. The researchers engaged the assistance of six field assistants. Two persons each were appointed for the three locations that serve as the areas of the study. Moreover, the youths (within the age bracket of 15-35) make up the population of the study. The youths are purposely chosen because they are more involved in the use of ICT. The researchers observe that these ‘new words’ in Nigerian SMS are common among the youths and do not necessarily cut across the entire GSM users. With the use of purposive cluster random sampling method, the researchers sampled two urban and one rural area within the southern, northern and western parts of the country.
Method and Sources of Data Collection
Data were collected from these locations viz: Enugu (for the South) and Kano and Lagos (for North and West respectively), with SMS from mobile phones serving as the primary source of data. The respondents were approached and they granted the researchers and field assistants access to the text messages they sent out within a period of two weeks. Additionally, library and the internet serve as secondary sources from where books, articles and papers relating to the topic were reviewed.
Population determination
Within the selected locations, five respondents were randomly selected; making a total of fifteen respondents in each area. Eight hundred and ten messages (messages in the English language) were extracted from their phones. This number gives an average of about ten messages per respondent. However, only one hundred and forty (140) items were seen to contain the kind of words the paper is interested in, (i.e. words that are not in normal Standard English forms).
CHAPTER FOUR
WORD FORMATION PROCESSES IDENTIFIED IN NIGERIAN SMS
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS
This study looked at how GSM users manipulate words and spelling symbols to re-create new words while writing their text messages. The previous section shows that GSM users make use of clipping, sound-reduction and initialisms involving abbreviation in forming these words. Example ‘A’ above shows that clipping in text messages comes in various forms. While some can be said to have a pattern, others are without any identifiable pattern. However, they are understood by the communicators. This can be proved by the communication flow observed in the data extracted from the respondents.
Again, there is a notable difference as well as irregularities that exist between the English sounds and their corresponding spellings. This, from the result of the findings, may be the reason behind the new form of writing exemplified in B above. Here, new words are formed on the basis of one-to-one correspondence between the pronunciation of words and their spelling. It is worthy of note to state that what is done is not outright transcription but a rendition of words is a typical Nigerian pronounceable way that still portrays the original word. Typically, the nearest letters that depict the speech sounds of the words are chosen in the representation and this is usually clear where the actual sound segment is not present in any of the native languages. As observed earlier, Plag (2002) sees it as pronunciation spelling which is not considered as a word creating process, rather to represent non-standard orthographic variants. But our findings see it as a word creating process. This conclusion was reached by observing other text messages (still within the 810 messages collected) sent by the same group of respondents to their elder ones and official colleagues. In these official text messages, the above instances of clips, abbreviations, alphanumeric, etc were written in Standard English forms. This is a clear indication that the respondents are not motivated by non-standard spelling. Furthermore, B (ii) shows a pattern of sound-reduction, which can be called alphanumeric, where numerals like 1, 2, 4, 8 and 9, are used to represent sounds. These can either be used in isolation or alongside other letters in the original word to form words in the language of Nigerian SMS users.
This study also discovers that there is a wide range of abbreviations in use among the SMS writers in Nigeria. As against the general notion that initials are being formed from names of organisations and technical names, we see these GSM users’ ability to reduce almost anything they desire to initials. These abbreviations range from single words to phrases, clauses, as well as sentences. Therefore, we can say that Nigerian GSM users reduce both simple and complex expressions to the starkest abbreviation.
It is also evident from the data presentation and analysis that what we have are all forms of reducing words and expressions because of lack of space, (which may not be far from the characteristic limited number of characters that are required in SMS), impatience on the part of GSM users to type full words (obviously to save time), and cost. As it concerns cost, it was only last year (2013) that the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) reached an agreement with network providers that inter network SMS charge be a flat rate of N4.00 per SMS. Before 2013, it costs N15.00 and above.
Furthermore, this study discovers that these ‘new words’ are generally interpreted in context. For instance, what is obtainable in the Nigerian context may be different from the Ghana or American context and vice versa. Also, the manner in which words are shortened in the sampled SMS shows that, except within context (i.e., context of use now), these expressions may not be understood. Even though interpretation of SMS is outside the scope of this paper but the analysis reveals that context is the major factor that provides lucid interpretation of these new created forms of writing, which people usually refer to as ‘the language of the GSM.’ Again, (though it is not within the scope of this paper), it is equally important to note that the users of these short forms are mostly youths. Adult GSM users, most times, do not understand this “new language”, and are not usually involved in it. Therefore, the usage is more among the youth, who apparently understand the language. Again, new words are not actually created in that sense of word formation. What we have is a unique writing system in Nigerian SMS that involves the recreation of existing words through clipping, alphanumeric, and sound reduction and deletion.
CONCLUSION
Every human society depending on its needs require new words from time to time to satisfy such needs. Therefore, new innovations make it needful for new words to come into a language in order to name new things and take care of their present communication needs. Every language needs new words almost every day. However, these words are got by borrowing, derivation, conversion, etc. The most important thing is that new concepts are taken care of in the vocabulary of a language. This is why language cannot remain static – since innovations will not cease. Hence, language keeps growing and developing to meet up with the changes in the society. In recent times, many words have entered the vocabularies of many languages as a result of many innovations; for example, the turn-around in the information communication technology (ICT) requires a great deal of new words to meet the demands of the industry since the words we have presently are not adequate to take care of the new things that come with it. ICT makes it necessary for new words like ‘internet, website, ping, cookies, blog, bookmark, download, etc to enter the vocabulary of the English language as well as for old words like web, surf, and bug, etc., to acquire new meanings. Also, there is need to reduce the number of characters in a text since the number of characters in a mobile phone is restricted. This encourages the use of clipped words, abbreviations and the reduction of series of letters to a single letter or figure that will take care of the sound(s) represented by the series of letters as we saw in the paper. Of all the processes of word formation available, Nigerian GSM users make use of clipping, initialisms, abbreviation, alphanumeric, sound-reduction and deletion to create ‘words’ in their SMS.
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