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In:Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes
Edited by Alexandra U. Esimaje, Ulrike Gut and Bassey E. Antia
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 88] 2019
► pp. 231–258

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Chapter 2.3
Namibian English on the web

Lexical and morphosyntactic features in a Corpus of Namibian Online Newspapers (CNamON)

 | University of Regensburg
Published online: 13 February 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.88.11kau
Abstract
The present chapter introduces the Corpus of Namibian Online Newspapers (CNamON), which encompasses the contents of seventeen news sources as available on the Internet from May to June 2016. These sources add up to roughly 44 million words of text. The corpus was compiled to facilitate taking a systematic account of the lexical and structural properties of Namibian English, which have not been investigated to date. This chapter focusses on the technical details of the compilation process of CNamON as well as its set-up and its usefulness for linguistic research. To demonstrate the corpus’ potential for analyses on the linguistic levels of lexis and (morpho-)syntax, both a qualitative stock-taking and exemplary quantitative analyses of structural characteristics of English in Namibia are provided.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Namibia: An overview
    • 2.1Facts and figures
    • 2.2A brief history of Namibia
    • 2.3Linguistic ecology
  • 3.A Corpus of Namibian Online Newspapers (CNamON)
    • 3.1Namibian newspapers and magazines
    • 3.2Content and size
    • 3.3Compilation
    • 3.4Benefits and limitations
  • 4.Lexical and syntactic features of NamE in CNamON
    • 4.1Lexis and word-formation
      • 4.1.1German loanwords
      • 4.1.2Afrikaans loanwords
      • 4.1.3Oshiwambo loanwords
      • 4.1.4English lexis and word-formation
    • 4.2Phrase structure and syntax
      • 4.2.1Verb phrase
      • 4.2.2Adjective phrase
      • 4.2.3Adverb phrase
      • 4.2.4Noun phrase
    • 4.3Discourse
    • 4.4Three quantitative accounts
      • 4.4.1Non-standard usage of indefinite article forms
      • 4.4.2go + (and) + bare infinitive
      • 4.4.3 Pain as a verb
  • 5.Summary and discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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