CONSONANT CLUSTER INPUT STRUCTURE RETENTION IN ENGLISH LOANWORDS

This book looks at the retention of consonant clusters in English loanwords in Shona as evidenced by the spoken discourse of Shona- English bilinguals. Theoretically Shona does not allow consonant clusters because they violate the syllable structure of Shona which is CV. However, because Shona - English bilinguals are competent in both Shona and English they tend to transfer some phonological structures of English into Shona hence changing the phonotactic structure of this language. This book argues therefore, for the inclusion of these consonant clusters in the current Shona orthography because they have become part and parcel of Shona phoneme inventory.