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Abstract

From the mid-1990s, with the advent of technology, English has become the language of globalization, an international language, a Lingua Franca for intercultural communication (Jenkins 2015, p. 10; Kirkpatrick 2008, p. 36), and the number of English speakers is increasing. At the same time, the Bantu languages and other languages around the world became primacy in linguistic research, contributing to language learning and revitalization of many oral languages. This paper discusses inflectional morphology, particularly the plural marker affixes for nouns in Cicopi. The primary goal is to help English learners, missionaries, Peace Corps volunteers, or any speakers of other languages that are willing to learn Cicopi. The paper also grasps peculiar affixation processes in inflectional morphology that make Cicopi distinctive to show how this language shifted from the 19 Proto-Bantu nominal classes as a result of language change. Moreover, the analysis gives insights on challenges that speakers of other languages, whose affixation rules match with English, might face when learning Cicopi, or how speakers of Cicopi find it challenging when dealing with inflectional morphology in English.

Faculty Supervisor

Dr. Ettien Koffi

Author Bio

Felix Maielane Manganhela is a graduate student in the MA TESOL/Applied Linguistics program at Saint Cloud State University. He earned a BA degree in Translation and Interpretation from French to Portuguese from Eduardo Mondlane University. He has spent most of his life in Mozambique. He is currently teaching English at Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique. His area of interest is descriptive analysis of Copi/Cicopi, a Bantu language spoken in southern Mozambique. Email address: felixmanganhela@gmail.com.

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