MORPHOLOGICAL AND SEMANTIC SHIFT IN BÙH

This study described the operation of morphological and semantic shifts in Bùh language. The language is spoken in Nasarawa and Kaduna states respectively. Some lexical items and expressions, over time, have undergone structural and meaning change in the language. Thus, this study focused on identifying such words and expressions. The dearth of literature on Buh is the motivation for this study. To the best of our knowledge, no study has been carried out in this area of the study. The study is descriptive in nature, and employed the interview method for data gathering. Competent native speakers of the language between 30-70 years were interviewed. The study adopted two theories, Egudu's (1975) Negative Positivism and Fillmore's (1976) Frame Semantics. The findings showed that certain words have been seen to have changed structurally. Thus, substitution of phonemes leads to structural change in the language. Also, the meaning of lexical items as well as expressions could change from positive to negative and vice versa: meaning shift in context and the description of what is naturally good as bad; excellent performance or achievement in terms of destructive action; a virtue or an achievement in terms of physical or moral defect; a happy situation in terms of a sad incident; a man of excellence in terms of an animal are realized in the language. The paper concluded that morphological and semantic shiftS in Bùh is one of the factors which causes endangerment for tthe language.