Chapter published in:
Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes
Edited by Alexandra U. Esimaje, Ulrike Gut and Bassey E. Antia
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 88] 2019
► pp. 259–292

Chapter 2.4
Lexical expansion in Ghanaian English from a diachronic perspective

A structural and semantic analysis

| University of Regensburg
This chapter provides a real-time structural and semantic analysis of lexical expansion in the Nativization phase of Ghanaian English based on the Historical Corpus of English in Ghana (HiCE Ghana) and the written-printed sections of the Ghanaian component of ICE. Taking a comprehensive list of previously attested ‘Ghanaianisms’ – innovative lexical items of English and local origin – as a starting point, the paper shows that traditional word-formation processes like derivation or compounding play only a subordinate role and that semantic shift is the most important process used in both periods. While the corpora are comparatively small for lexical research, the results still provide a useful starting point to better our understanding of how Ghanaian English has evolved over the past 40 years.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: Lexis in the dynamic model
  • 3.Previous studies on the lexis of Ghanaian English
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1General findings
    • 5.2Word-formation analysis
    • 5.3Semantic classification
    • 5.4Entrenchment
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 February 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.88.12bra
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