PROF. IRIBE MWANGI

Kiswahili is not classified as a harmonic language. However, this paper argues that the language exhibits some harmonic tendencies in so far as vowels are concerned. Consequently, the paper discusses vowel harmony as evident in Standard Kiswahili. The paper applies a segmental and a suprasegmental theory. The discussion proves that vowel harmony in Standard Kiswahili is both a segmental and a suprasegmental property. The two theories used are the natural generative phonological theory and autosegmental phonological theory. The corpus used is drawn from verbs and demonstratives.

This handbook has deliberately opted to use Standard Kiswahili because this is the dialect that has largely given Kiswahili international status (the language is taught in most major world Universities) and which is bound to take it to greater heights. Standard Kiswahili is the dialect that is taught in schools and colleges and is used in formal trade and official circles. As stated by Chimerah (2000) Standard Kiswahili is the mainstream Kiswahili. This handbook holds the view that Kiswahili is a Bantu language. Greenberg (1966) states that the African region has four main language families namely: Niger-Kordofanian, Nile-Saharan, Afro-Asiatic and Khoisan. Under Niger-Kordofanian there is the Benue-Congo sub-family from which Bantu languages emanate. One of the major distinctions of the Bantu languages is that their noun-class systems portray concordial agreement. Kiswahili is a mobilizing tool that is spoken in the East African Coast from Brava all the way to Mozambique. Encarta Africana [Ms Encyclopedia (2005)] remarks that this coastal strip measures about 2,000 miles (approximately 3,200KM).Kiswahili has its place now and in the future. In the year 2003, for example, Kiswahili was declared as one of the working languages of the African Union. It has also been adopted as a language for the East African Community by the Heads of State Summit of member countries.

Standard Kiswahili has borrowed various lexical items from many diverse languages. As a result of this borrowing, Standard Kiswahili is at times (erroneously) seen as an admixture language born out of mixing different languages. The purpose of this paper is to show that while Standard Kiswahili has borrowed just like many other languages have, the loan words undergo various adaptation processes that give them a fundamentally Kiswahili and Bantu structure (Iribemwangi 2012). In the adaptation, various strategies are applied and these include substitution, insertion and deletion of both consonants and vowels. These strategies do not just lead to nativization of borrowed lexicon but they do also lead to the realization of the preferred syllable structure. Although Standard Kiswahili has largely maintained its syllable structure, nonetheless, it has had to accede to a few new structures. Using the P-rules and, to a lesser extent, the MP-rules as espoused in Natural Generative Phonology, this paper shows that any rules and structures in a language remain the only rules and structures to the extent that no new rules and processes have entered a language at a given time. Otherwise, the rules of any language are very dynamic and are perpetually prone to change as is exemplified using Standard Kiswahili data.