Abstract

This article explores five discourse-pragmatic features—si, sijui, eish, kumbe, and kweli—which are borrowed from African languages into Kenyan English, in order to examine their sources, meanings, frequencies, spelling adaptation, collocational patterns, positioning, syntactic distribution, and discourse-pragmatic functions. The data, which are extracted from the Kenyan components of the International Corpus of English-East Africa and the Global Web-based English corpus, are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, from a postcolonial corpus pragmatic framework. The results show that the borrowed discourse-pragmatic features are infrequent, orthographically stable, favour clause-initial position, and rarely co-occur with other discourse-pragmatic features. Si, sijui, and kweli are pragmatic markers used to request confirmation of shared knowledge, indicate uncertainty, and emphasise the truth value in a proposition, respectively. Eish and kumbe are interjections which are mainly used to express emotions of irritation and surprise, respectively. This study extends the research on the discourse-pragmatic features of Kenyan English.

摘要

本文探讨了五个语用语用特征—— si、sijui、eish、kumbe和kweli ——从非洲语言借入肯尼亚英语，以检查它们的来源、含义、频率、拼写适应、搭配模式、定位、句法分布和语用语用功能。这些数据是从国际英语-东非语料库和全球网络英语语料库的肯尼亚语成分中提取的，从后殖民语料库语用框架中进行了定量和定性分析。结果表明，被借用的语篇语用特征不频繁、拼写稳定、偏爱从句首位置，很少与其他语篇语用特征同时出现。司、司瑞和奎力是语用标记，分别用于请求确认共享知识、指示不确定性和强调命题中的真值。Eish和kumbe是感叹词，分别主要用于表达刺激和惊讶的情绪。本研究扩展了对肯尼亚英语语篇语用特征的研究。