A ROAD-MAP FOR SCIENCE TERMINOLOGY PLANNING IN TIV

Tiv language planning efforts date back to the coming of the Christian missionaries in Tiv land in 1911. Planning during that era, and, in fact for a long time thereafter, was basically carried out in such areas as reducing the language to writing, writing of grammar books, linguistic description of the language, etc. Terminology, a crucial aspect of language planning was, and is still, however, neglected. This is a major gap in the development efforts in the language. Against the backdrop that languages can develop into functional languages through efforts of terminology development, the supplying of appropriate scientific and technical terms to any language should be a priority, especially in a multilingual setting like Nigeria. The little that has been done on Tiv in the area of terminology cannot be said to be adequate to support specialised communication in the language. This chapter, therefore, aims at showing how terminology planning is important in the modernisation of Tiv, and it should, therefore, be given the desired attention. Though the area of science is focused on, the framework provided could, to some extent, be replicated in other domains too.