A literature review is a description, summarisation, evaluation and clarification of the literature relevant to a particular field or topic (Lane, 1996). In other words, it provided an overview of the field of inquiry showing how prevailing ideas fit, agree or differ from this study. This study by virtue of its major thrust, reviewed literature that provided a relevant background and insight to the topic under study, which is to analyse term creation strategies used in specialised terms dictionaries. The literature on term creation and language revitalisation generally will form the background of this study. The researcher used evidence drawn from these literatures and fieldwork research as presented in Chapter 2. One common way to approach a literature review is to start out broad and then become more specific.It can
10 be postulated that a good research begins at its broadest point focusing as the analysis continues until it concludes at the point at which the research focus is established. The funnel approach thereby guided the researcher to focus on broad issues related to term creation the world over and then narrowed it to the specifics of the study. This gave the study some breadth and depth ofrelevant information for the study, identifying pitfalls and gaps which may need filling. Basing on this notion, new discoveries therefore, do not materialize out of nowhere; but they build upon the findings of previous experiments and investigations.Hence, Muranda (2004:27) argues that in research, every subject tends to have some outstanding researchers whose works are commonly quoted because their views form ground rules for the subject”. Many scholars of African languages and linguists in Zimbabwe and abroad have already shown an interest in the study of terminology and they have been dealing with the issues of language elaboration and revitalisation for some time now. Some of the literature discusses strategies of term creation strategies such as borrowing, compounding, derivation, acronyms, shortening, abbreviation, semantic expansion, loan translation and coinages. The literature identified the strengths and shortfalls, challenges of these term creation strategies so as to give an effective analysis of research findings.
The literature review process for this study was divided into three categories; literature from scholars that are of non-African descent, then literature by scholars of African descent and finally narrowed to literature by scholars of Zimbabwean descent. This gave the researcher a focus to the research analysis, as similar studies are grouped together. Charamba (2012) argues that the sub-categorisation of scholars of African descent into two is justified on the fact that Zimbabwe is the microcosm case study for the research while post-independence Africa as a whole is the macrocosmic case study for the same research.
Western countries linguists remain far less committed to terminology activities than their counterparts in other counties (Strehlow and Wright, 1993:2) and hence very few English speaking linguists have taken interest in terminology activities (De Cluver 1980:53). The researcher therefore focused on linguists from Asian, Northand South American countries such as Canada, India, China, Malaysia, and Japan which are formerly colonised countries.
These linguists provided an overview of language development efforts around the world, enabling the researcher to get an insight on the interactive aspects of language development the world over.Premsrirat and Malone (2003) and Coronel-Molina (2011) examine what language revitalisation and planning mean both as developments on their own and as part of the nation-building and the serious obstacles the programmes face in Asia. The Asian
11 scholars argue that language development activities must precede and contribute to the literacy and mother tongue education components as language revitalisation program.
Bauman (1980) and Burnaby (1996) urge practitioners in applied linguistics and minority language education to develop participatory ways in the process of language development.
These include collaborations in designing or revising appropriate writing systems for the languages and for promoting mother tongue literature. Spencer (1991) provided various term creation strategies which can be utilised by terminologists for language development efforts.
Denzer-King (2008), Brisson (2009) and Ahmad (2011) confirm that in vocabulary expansion, dictionaries are typically an early strategy for standardising a previously unwritten language. Their studies provided an overview of language development efforts in their respective countries emphasizing the interactive aspects of language development and the facilitation of minority language literature development. To achieve goals of language development, they emphasise that it is necessary to take draconian measures at all levels, to unite, articulate and multiply these efforts.
Premsrirat and Malone (2003), Greymorning (1999) also argue that language development involves teaching, cultivating, strengthening and disseminating a language to make it a vital instrument of communication. Felber (1980), Sager (1990), Gilreath (1993) Valentois (1997) provided literature about terms as the subject matter of the field of study, and they explained the relationships that they have with the concepts that they represent. Their literature show that the study of terminology does not end with naming concepts but also includes collection, description and presentation of terms in a way that displays the relationships between concepts and terms of particular subject fields. Wuster, (1955) and Cabre (1999) provided the literature about the theory of terminology, and how the theories which guide terminographers in the creation of specialised terms. The study drew a lot of information on these theories and among them theories from renowned scholars such as Felber (1984), Sager (1990) and Cabre (2002). The theoretical framework of this study is given in Chapter 3. It therefore served as a guideline to this research.
Many academic papers on language development and term creation have been written by African scholars calling for the greater use of African languages in all facets of communication in Africa (Mazuruse and Mberi 2012). This is a counter response to the colonial legacy which has rendered African languages impotent in many African countries.
Countries like South Africa, Tanzania, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana among others
12 have made significant contributions in indigenous languages development. Hence, literature from linguists in these countries was reviewed by the researcher. Nkomo (2008) argues that term creation is a tool of revitalising, empowering and accommodating African languages.
Term creation help in the democratisation of science and technology by making this knowledge more accessible in the languages which people understand better. Onyango (2005) examines issues that emerge in the attempt that have been made in national language policy on language terminology in Kenya by linguists and scholars. Onyango (2005) views terminology development as a process that entails the formation of a language institute, setting up of goals, the actual engineering of the terms, the mode of dissemination and evaluation. However, he notes that there is no organised structure in Kenya to undertake terminology planning. By presenting various approaches and applications of terminology development, the Onyango’s (2005) work raises fundamental questions about the use of concepts and the ordering of terminological knowledge. Moreover, important new insights into the principles and methods employed in terminology development are offered by the ways in which contributors have tackled problems of terminology in their specific subject fields. Msimang (2000) provides literature on the ways to improve grammatical terminology for the teaching of African languages at tertiary level. Prah (1997), Anchimbe (2006), Ogutu (2006), Webb (2006) provided literature of how various language policies and attitudes towards African languages influence or retard language development and elaboration efforts in Africa. Mtintsilana and Morris (1988), Van Huyssteen (1999) Madiba (1998), Mabasa (2005), Mojela (2010) provide various works on term creation strategies, the problem of term creation equivalence of borrowed terms and issues of standardisation of the created terms.
Alberts (1999) gave a general terminology and outlook in South Africa, clarity of relationships between concepts and terms in specialised communication. Mufwene (2001) and Kame (2012) touched on multilingualism in African countries. They urged Africans to embrace linguistic diversity so as to improve indigenous language development efforts.
Therefore linguistic diversity can be viewed as an indigenous language development tool.
Louwrens (1996) work shows that attitudes towards indigenous languages are difficult to change and there is need for an aggressive approach in tackling this issue. This can be done by cultivating it through the media that is indigenous languages should be used in the media and that government should take an active role. Linguists and language users should be aggressive in their endeavors to develop and promote indigenous languages in major domains like publishing in African languages, using the indigenous languages as a medium of
13 transmission in the education system. It was helpful and relevant for this study’s component of terminology and social attitudes of speakers.
Alexander (2007) shows the relationship between language status and power. He comments that the problem is made acute by the non-usage of indigenous languages in formal situations like industry, commerce, education and law. (This contention is also aired by Magwa (2006) and Zvobgo (1992). These are the areas where corpus planning should be emphasised. He purports that these areas need urgent attention from all relevant government departments, language planners, academics and linguists. Alaxander proposes that the language users should be conscientised about the benefits of using their own indigenous language in education and administrative domains, and show how this will improve their own lives. Thus he observes that the Zimbabwean language policy confines African languages to the unofficial domain, which have led to the underdevelopment of terminology in almost all the fields. As such he notes with concern, the absence of specialized terminology in African languages, for the various disciplines one can think of.
Furthermore, these linguists had valuable ideas on how to solve the various problems that terminographers may face during the process of term formation. Usually problems faced by terminographers in lexical engineering are equally the same, and these problems are applicable to the Shona language as well. It is against this background that the issues of adequacy and appropriateness of the term creation strategies in the current study emerged, although the purpose of this study is, however, to provide an analysis of the term creation strategies used in the Shona specialised dictionaries. Nonetheless, both research studies are more or less the same on the issue of terminological development.
There are many linguists in Zimbabwe who view language revitalisation as a worth exercise to empower indigenous languages such that they will be used in science and technology.
They contend that there is a great need to develop indigenous languages for use in all spheres.
One such scholar is Mutasa (2002) who hopes that post-colonial Africa would employ a radical shift … giving impetus to a resurgence of African languages so that they may carry philosophical and scientific discourse to unprecedented heights. In his study he put forward term creation strategies that can be implemented for the rejuvenation and revitalisation of African languages in sub Saharan Africa such as borrowing, compounding and coinages.
These term creation strategies should involve people from the grassroots. Furthermore he posits that successful implementation of language change depends on the attitudes of the
14 users and Mutasa urges linguists to change the attitudes through a psychological approach.
This study was very significant to this study because it revealed the different term creation strategies that can be used to elaborate and revitalise a language. However, this study scrutinised and analysed the effectiveness of these term creation strategies in the compilation of Shona specialised dictionaries.
Chimhundu (2002) have contributed valuable ideas and useful information for this study especially on the issue of treatment of loan words, which he prefers to call adoptives, in a receiving language. Emphasis of his study is on the process of transfer and continuity with related processes mainly focusing on the phonological level where it has been found that transferred elements undergo a process of assimilation before they become fully integrated, (also noted by King 1969, Mwasoko 1989, Thomason 2001, Hadebe 2002). In other words, he shows how loan words are morphologically and phonologically adapted in the receiving language. Chimhundu also describes how the Shona language is coping in the contact situation with other languages like English, Swahili, Portuguese, Ndebele, Sotho, and Cewa, Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans (Chimhundu, 2002: 32). Chimhundu notes that the contact languages, especially the dominant English language do not threaten the existence of the Shona language as they are operating with positive effect at the lexical levels and it will not die or shift to other languages. Chimhundu’s thesis was particularly useful in that it shed more light into the overall language development situation. Chimhundu gave information about speech habits, thus provided the researcher with detailed analysis of attitudes of language users towards coined words aimed at replacing the adoptives.
Hadebe (2007) posits that the first monolingual Ndebele dictionary, Isichazamazwi SesiNdebele, had a number of effects on Ndebele, some of which had implications for language planning such as the standardisation of Ndebele. He mainly focuses on the standardisation of vocabulary and spelling and raised crucial questions for a general monolingual dictionary like Isichazamazwi SesiNdebele which benefitted this study. His work exposed major problems encountered in term creation. Hadebe (2007) highlighted the problems encountered with spelling of loanwords. This study drew a lot of terminological information from Hadebe’s dictionary-making experience. However, this study is different from Hadebe’s work, in that it mainly focuses particularly on term creation strategies of Shona specialised dictionaries while Hadebe’s work is on the monolingual Ndebele vocabulary dictionary.
15 Overally, outstanding scholars in this study are: Gumperz (1968), Bauman (1980), Chumbow (1980), Mateene (1980), Felber (1984) Mwasoko (1989), Renouf (1987), Mtintsilana and Morris (1988), Sager (1990), Fishman (1991), Spencer (1991) Chiwome (1992), Sonneveld and Loening (1993), McMahon (1994) Mazrui (1995), Burnaby, (1996) Fishman (1996), Louwrens (1996), Prah (1997), Sonneveld (1997), Valentois (1997), Madiba (1998), Alberts (1999), Fishman (1999), Echu (1999), Greymorning (1999), Van Huyssteen (1999), Msimang (2000), Fishman (2001), Mufwene (2001), Cabre (2002), Chimhundu (2002), Hadebe, (2002), Mutasa (2002), Makoni and Meinhaff (2003), Premsrirat and Malone (2003), Qorro (2003), Viriri (2004), Chimhundu, (2005), Mabasa (2005) Makaudze, (2005), Mutasa (2005), Onyango (2005), Anchimbe (2006), Hadebe, (2006), Magwa (2006), Mutasa (2006), Ogutu (2006), Roy-Campbell (2006), Vambe (2006), Webb (2006). Alexander (2007) Hadebe (2007) Magwa and Mutasa (2007), Mheta (2007), Denzer-King 2008, Mutasa and Ogutu (2008),Nkomo (2008), Brisson (2009), Coronel-Molina (2009), Mheta (2009), Mojela (2010), Ahmad (2011), Nyota and Mapara (2011), Charamba, (2012), Kame (2012), Mazuruse and Mberi (2012) and Ndhlovu (2012).