International Journal of Language & Linguistics

Mechanisms of Lexical Expansion in Ejagham Language: A Descriptive Analysis
Magdaline BAKUME NKONGHO

Abstract
The promotion of African languages through Mother Tongue Education is considered an important component to achieving UNESCO’s 2007 Education For All (EFA) and the Millenium Development Goals (MDG).This comes along with enormous challenges including the acquisition of scientific knowledge and technological know-how in the language the people know best. With the advent of globalization, researchers are faced with the genuine problem of providing scientific and technical vocabulary so that African languages can respond to this challenge which is indispensable in the enterprise of national development. The need to express scientific knowledge introduced via western languages, reveal the inadequacy of African languages to cope with the demands of the contact of cultures and civilization. Confronted with such inadequacies, native speakers are often led to spontaneously seeking ways and means of extending their vocabularies so as to cope with the much demands of cultural revolutions. (Chumbow,1994). This paper provides a descriptive analysis on mechanisms of lexical expansion in Ejagham, a Bantu language spoken in the South West region of Cameroon. The language possesses adequate morphological, morphophonological and morphosyntactic processes to cope with expression of new ideas. It is hoped the discussions will serve as a guide in facilitating lexical innovation as an enterprise in language development and will contribute to the position that any language can be rapidly developed by applying certain language engineering principles and techniques to enable it assume a greater function in education and national development.

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