The morphosyntactic integration of English words into Afaan Oromoo

The present study investigates the morphosyntactic integration of English lexical items into Afaan Oromoo within multilingual conversations recorded in Dambi Dollo, Oromia regional state, Western Ethiopia. Drawing from the field of contact linguistics, the study examines how English words and phrases are incorporated into Afaan Oromoo conversation while maintaining the grammatical structure and integrity of the matrix (or dominant) language. The analysis explores how English lexical items are inserted into Afaan Oromoo clauses while preserving the grammatical integrity of the matrix language. The analysis is grounded in the Matix Language Frame (MLF) model and the 4-M framework, which together provide a theoretical basis for explaining how bilingual speakers organise and integrate lexical insertion within mixed language utterances. The study examines the syntactic and morphological behaviour of English insertions in bilingual clauses extracted from two transcribed audio recordings of informal conversations among bilingual speakers of the Mecha dialect of Afaan Oromoo. The findings demonstrate that Afaan Oromoo consistently maintains (Subject)–Object–Verb ([S]OV) word order and supplies all system morphemes, such as agreement, case and aspect markers even when English content morphemes, such as nouns, verbs and adjectives, are present. English insertions are morphologically adapted through Oromo affixation processes, ensuring grammatical conformity within the MLF model. These results confirm that bilingual speakers integrate English lexical items in a structurally predictable manner, affirming Afaan Oromoo’s dominant grammatical role in bilingual utterances, reinforcing its grammatical dominance and structural resilience rather than producing random or unstructured linguistic blends. The study contributes to our understanding of morphosyntactic integration in Ethiopia’s multilingual linguistic landscape and provides empirical support for the applicability and explanatory power of the MLF in Africa, particularly the Ethiopian sociolinguistic context.