MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN PRODUCT NAMING BY TRADO-MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS IN NIGERIA

The paper aims at investigating the morphological processes underlining the naming of products by trado-medical practitioners in Nigeria. The subjects for the study are thirty itinerant trado-medical practitioners. The data were collected through oral interview, tape recordings and observational notes. It is found out that though the trado-medical practitioners in Nigeria make use of several morphological processes in naming their products, the commonest morphological process used is blending.

Introduction

This paper reports the morphological strategies employed by some Nigerian trado medical practitioners in naming their products. Although traditional medicine has been in practice in Nigeria from time immemorial, it is only recently that it is accorded a reasonably wider acceptance by the government as well as by a greater percentage of Nigerians. For instance, a trado-medical practitioner is allowed to practice and establish his own hospital and more importantly, he is permitted to register his products with National Food and Drug Administration and Control in Nigeria (NAFDAC), once all the requirements are met.

In spite of the recognition given to traditional medicine in Nigeria, its practitioners still face numerous problems. One of such problems, which is the focus of this study, is how to give generally acceptable English names to their products and, at the same time, make them sound like the names given to orthodox medicine with which people are already familiar. This becomes a very critical problem as most of these trado medical practitioners are either illiterates or barely literate in English. In the course of trying to overcome this problem, they do make use of various morphological strategies in naming their products which is the focus of this study. Briefly put, the central question that the present study attempts to answer is: What are the morphological strategies trado-medical practitioners in Nigeria employ in naming their products?

Literature Review

Languages do cope richly and readily with frequent occurrences of new ideas, tools, concepts, products and memorable happenings with the creation of new morphemes and words. In Wale’s (1989) observation, this linguistic creativity is most evident in words rather than in sentences, in the innovation of meaning and of word creation in the lexicon to keep pace with new technological developments and social fashions. The relative infrequency of new words with both new meanings and new form when compared to the frequency of new words with just new meanings or new forms illustrates a principle of limited novelty generally effective in the formation of new morphemes (Hudson 2002). As a result of this principle, hardly do we find entirely new morphemes, even though there is no evidence that language limits our imagination.

A number of sorts of new-word formation processes have been identified in literature. Hudson (2003) for example identified six. In four of these, old meanings are given new forms (clipping, blending, acronyming and word cutting). In two, new meanings are given new forms (inventions and borrowing). Experience has shown that an encounter with new products and concepts have always left the society with two options. The first option is borrowing which, according to Francis (1994), has been the most prolific source of addition to the vocabulary of English language. The second option is for both the individual and the society to explore and exploit the morphological resources inherently present in that language. The formation of names for new products requires some ingenuity and manipulative skills on the part of inventors and manufacturers. According to Akinwale (1994), manufacturers set out decidedly to create new words and employ existing ones with novelty and creativeness. In his study of pharmaceutical nomenclature in English, blending was revealed as having a high preference, accounting for about 73% of the data analyzed.

Every language has its own set of rules, and all human beings do exhibit a natural tendency to look for and use rules when processing language. Native speakers do also share a great deal of largely unconscious knowledge about their language, and they do acquire this knowledge without formal instruction. Rules and principles governing language use are not at all, according to Halle (1994), something esoteric that “linguists and other pedants enjoy splitting hairs over.” Speakers, both high and low apply these rules with the greatest ease, with or without instruction, to create new words and when they do, they create them by very regular and predictable processes.

Ethnographic Background

In Africa, the reality of the practice of traditional medicine has been researched into by scholars such as Harley (1970), MaClean (1971), Idowu (1973), Dopamu (1977), Sofowora (1982) and Adegbite (1993), to mention a few. Adegbite (1993:01) noted that the traditional medicine of the Yoruba people in Nigeria incorporates a four–square intersection of two parts of terms: positive/ negative and personal/communal. The traditional role of the herbalist or priest is to diagnose and treat an illness of a patient or client within his normal areas of specialty. Yoruba traditional medicine practitioners believe in the supernatural and in the system of magic and medicine. Studies by Idowu (1962), Olayemi (1975), and Dopamu (1977) attest to this. Carothers (1959), Dopamu (1977), Olatunji (1984), and Adegbite (1993) researched into the use of language in Yoruba traditional medicine. Using an eclectic textual model as framework for an explicit and comprehensive description of texts from therapeutic communication in Yoruba, Adegbite (1993) identified some content and formal features of language use in the Yoruba traditional medicine texts collected.

Olateju (2005) examined the structure of Yoruba local drug advertisement in the ancient city of Ile-Ife, Osun State, in Nigeria. The data she used consisted of texts from the advertisers of the drugs moving from city to city. The analysis of the data showed that the advertisers and sellers of these drugs enjoyed the patronage of the restricted populace they served. She concluded, inter alia, that “there is the belief that some diseases defy western medicine and that the only way out for such diseases is African medicine” (p 88).

Whereas trado-medical practitioners in the past stayed in their various towns and villages, and the clients seek them out. About a decade ago, practitioners of traditional medicine saw the need to organize themselves for both personal and group effectiveness and, in response to the need to reach more people, began to travel around to dispense their skills and medicinal ware. They move from town to town in groups of thirty, forty, or there about, settle at a location, make booths which they refer to as stands, and stay around for one to three months attending to the health needs of people with various ailments. They also go on air to announce their presence and advertise the kinds of ailments in which they specialize. The practitioners, according to some of them, combine natural healing with compounding of drugs and divination.

Interactions with the group of 30 that camped at the Ife City stadium in Ile-Ife in Osun State, Nigeria, revealed that most of them became practitioners through natural intuition and training. Our interactions with them also revealed that they came together from different places i.e. the north, east and western parts of Nigeria and that they specialize in the treatment of different ailments ranging from infertility, mental problem, diabetes, weak male organs, fibroid, long standing sores, epilepsy, orthopaedic problems, bone problems, paediatric diseases, to gonorrhea etc. Their ages range between 28 and 65 years, and there were ten females and twenty males altogether. Most of them did not have more than a Standard Six primary school leaving certificate as their level of formal education, although some went beyond this.

Although the traditional medicine practitioners generally emphasized the efficacy of their drugs, which are made plainly from roots and herbs, they confessed that for cases that defy ordinary medication with roots and herbs, supernatural powers are consulted for revelations of solutions to the problem. This is in line with the findings of Adegbite (1993:01) in which he noted that Yoruba traditional medicine believe in the supernatural. In response to why they become itinerant instead of the normal convention of staying in one place, they had these to say:

The traditional medicine practitioners have also modernized their operations. Patients are made to pay for consultations and obtain cards in which information about them and the ailments are recorded. Their drugs are now well packaged in powder and liquid forms in bottles with appropriate labels. On examination, it was noticed that some of the drugs had labels with peculiar names and this attracted our attention and informed the reason for this paper.

During some of our interactions with them, the practitioners of traditional medicine complained that NAFDAC insists that they write the composition of their drugs on the labels for packaging. This directive cannot be fully followed, they insist, because some of the ingredients are supernatural incantations that cannot be written on paper. These are rapidly spoken, supernaturally laden words and sentences that serve as the medium through which the supernatural power flows through the roots and herbs. Jakarae (a female traditional medicine practitioner) specifically noted that reciting some incantations and putting the third finger on the navel of a bleeding woman will stop the bleeding and that NAFDAC officials cannot understand this. Jakarae also noted that some of her colleagues specialize in the three aspects of traditional medicine: pharmaceutics (i.e., compounding and making different drugs), divination, (i.e., consulting supernatural powers for solutions to naughty problems), and normal or simple healing procedures.

Method of Data Collection

The data for this work was collected in three different ways. First, the radio and television advertisements were taped with a unidirectional cassette recorder. Second, individual practitioners were interviewed and their responses tape recorded at the Ife City Stadium. Third, observational notes were taken on some of their activities in terms of their interactions with their clients, product display, and naming of essential drugs. Samples of their handbills, complimentary cards and drugs were copied, and analysed. Transcriptions of the recorded adverts and interviews are used in parts of this paper.

Data Analysis and Discussion

In this section, we present the analyses as well as the discussion of the various data collected. In order to give a vivid picture of the strategies used by our subjects, we divided this section into the following subsections: blending, alphabetism or acronymy, compounding, clipping, nominalisations, and the use of indigenous words which have no direct equivalents in English.

Blending

The most prominent strategy found in the data is blending. In blending, there are usually two free morphemes, a part of each of which is cut off and the remaining parts merged to form a hybrid which is then used to name products. The units that are blended to form the labels consist of:

The formation of Bolaron, for example, can be explained as follows. There are two proper names (Adebola and Ronke- typical Yoruba names). Adebola and Ronke are four and three syllable words respectively in Yoruba (i.e., A-de-bo-la and Ro-n-ke). The first two syllables in Adebola (i.e., A-de) are cut off while the third syllable of Ro-n-ke (i.e., ke) is also cut off. The remaining parts i.e., bola and ron are then combined to form Bolaron which is the name of a blood tonic. Similarly, hypershe is formed from hypertension where the free morpheme tension is cut off and She-ri-fat (a three syllable Islamic name) where the last two syllables (i.e., ri-fat) are cut off. The remaining parts (i.e., hyper and she) are thus joined together to form Hypershe as the name of the drug which can cure hypertension. Apparently, in most cases, there is usually an observed link between the proper name of the inventor and the name they give to their drugs. As has been said above, hypershe is formed hyper(tension) and She(rifat) which is the name of the inventor. This word formation process is also made use of in the formation of Shediab, Tyshe and Bolaron. However, this kind of relationship does not apply in the formation of irremen and flobac in which there is no clue whatsoever to the name of the inventor.

Acronymy and Alphabetism

Another morphological process that features prominently in the data collected is acronymy and alphabetism. While acronymy consists in making use of the first letter of each of the words making up the name of a drug to form a new name for the same drug, alphabetism involves the use of certain letters within the same word to form a new name for a particular drug. The effect of this is usually to either avoid a long-winding name or to make the new name formed sound unique and catchy to customers. Some examples of acronymy found in the data are:

From the data in 4.2, the emphasis of the trado-medical practitioners in naming their products here is on the ailments. For example, there are YE, AC and GS for Yellow Fever, Asthma Cough and Gonorrhea & Syphilis respectively. It should be noted that these are the names of the ailments that could be cured by certain powder or syrup. Surprisingly, in most cases, when acronymy is used by our subjects, they do not include the name of the actual content e.g., powder, syrup, solution etc. This also applies to alphabetism. Instead of a name like TP Killer for Typhoid Killer, we simply have TP. Most of our subjects claimed that they had to do this in order to avoid long names and more importantly, to help their apprentices learn the names of most drugs fast.

Compounding

Compounding normally involves the joining together of two free morphemes (i.e., two simple words) to form a new word. Hudson (2000) identifies three types of compounds: open, hyphenated and solid. There are few examples of compounding in the data we collected, and these include:

From the examples above, stopile is an example of a solid compound while infertility powder is an instance of an open compound. It should however be noted that infertility which is one of the units making infertility powder has undergone another morphological process namely affixation. Apart from the examples of compound words above, there are other examples in our data whose formations cannot be said to be regarded as the direct joining together of two or more free morphemes. For instance, a drug is named Sheferboost. Our interaction with the producer of this drug revealed that it was formed from three words i.e., Sherifat (a proper name), fertility, and boost. This compound word first of all makes use of blending in the formation of shefer (i.e., She(rifat) + fer(tility)) and the blend then forms a new unit in sheferboost which is formed from shefer plus boost. Other examples in which one of the units that make up the compound is not just one single free morpheme are Antibacterial Killer and Dabiaron Antibiotic. In the naming of Antibacteria Killer, the low competence in English of some of our subjects is revealed. For instance, anti- means ‘against’, and this makes the addition of killer superfluous. It could have been left either as Antibacteria or Bacteria Killer.

Clipping

We have clipping when a part of a word is cut off and the remaining part is used as a new word. Clippings, Hudson (2000: 242) says, show “the appearance and pronounceability of English words. With the passage of time, clippings may fully replace their original longer forms” The only instance of clipping used by one of our subjects is staf formed from Staphylococcus. In this word, the part that is cut off is in parenthesis Staph(ylococcus), and it should be noted that although there is an orthographic difference between staph and staf, there is no phonetic difference as the letters ph in staph and the letter f in staf are realized the same way.

Nominalisations

In some cases, some of our subjects created new words which seem to defy the established morphological processes. This creation of new words which we regard here as nominalisations are in line with the opinion of Fromkin and Rodman (1998: 82) who claim that “New words may also enter a language in a variety of ways. Some words are created outright to fit some purpose.” Some of the words created by our subjects are as follows:

It is important to say that in each of the examples above, there is a headword which is modified by some modifiers (cf. Muir 1972). While soap is the headword of sherry herbal medical soap, solution is the headword of low sperm count solution. This is characteristic of nominal items. It should be noted that the two examples above are very long as each of them is formed from four words.

The use of indigenous words which have no direct equivalents in English

It is a natural linguistic phenomenon for language users to make use of words from their indigenous languages in the target language especially when they cannot think of direct equivalents of those words in the target language. In Nigeria, English coexists with a lot of other numerous languages such as Yoruba, Hausa, Tiv, Igbo, Fulfude etc. One of the reasons Yoruba³ speakers do make use of expressions directly from their mother tongue, as has been pointed out above, to name products is because there are no perfect English equivalents of the concepts which the Yoruba words represent. From our data, such indigenous expressions include:

Conclusion

In this paper, we have looked at the strategies which Nigerian trado-medical practitioners adopt in naming their products. The study reveals that the trado-medical practitioners in Nigeria make use of the following morphological processes: blending, acronymy and alphabetism, compounding, coinage and direct borrowing. However, the commonest morphological process that is used by our subjects is blending. This finding is in line with Akinwale’s (1994) study.

Bibliography

Adegbite, A. B. 1993. Some features of language use in Yoruba traditional medicine. African Languages and Cultures 6.1, 1 10

Akinwale, O. T. 1994. Morphological processes in pharmaceutical nomenclature. Ife Studies in English Language 3.1, 21-31.

Carothers. J. C. 1959. Culture, psychiatry and the written word. Psychiatry 22, 307 – 20.

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Notes

1 It should be noted that Bolaron is a blood tonic.

2 Note that the letters in brackets are cut off.

3 Note that even though we had speakers of the three major languages among the trado-medical practitioners used as subjects in this paper, most of our subjects are Yoruba speakers of English. This is perhaps why all the words borrowed are from Yoruba.

Moji A. Olateju, Akinmade. T. Akande, & Olayiwola. T. Akinwale. “Morphological Processes in Product Naming by Trado-Medical Practitioners in Nigeria,” West Africa Review: Issue 8, 2005.

Types	Sources of formation	Name of drugs	Formed from	Process (P) and the word formed (F)
a	Proper name + Proper name	Bolaron¹	Adebola Proper name in Yoruba + Ronke Proper name in Yoruba	P: (Ade)bola + Ron(ke)² F: Bolaron
b	Proper name + Name of the ailment	Shediab	Sherifat Proper name + diabetics Name of ailment	P: She(rifat) + diab(etics) F: Shediab
c	Name of the ailment + Proper name	Hypershe	Hypertension Name of ailment + Sherifat Proper Name	P: Hyper(tension) + She(rifat)
c	Name of the ailment + Proper name	Tyshe	Typhoid Name of ailment + Sherifat Proper name	P: Ty(phoid) + She(rifat) F: Tyshe
d	Verb + Noun	Flobac	Flush + bacteria Verb + Noun	P: Flu(sh) + bac(teria) F: Flobac
e	Adjective + Noun	Irremen	Irregular + menstruation	P: Irre(gular) + men(struation) F: Irremen

Acronym	Original name
YE	Yellow Fever
AC	Asthma Cough
GS	Gonnorrhea & Syphilis
BAV	Bones, Arthritis and vein Problems’ Powder
STD	Sexually Transmitted Diseases

Alphabet formed	Real word
TP	Typhoid
DB	Diabetics
GR	Gonorrhea

Compound	Formed from
Stopile	Stop + Pile
Infertility Powder	Infertility + powder