Abstract:
Lexemes in linguistics are not restricted in their semantic scopes and interpretation.
This article focuses on the evidence of Cognitive Grammatical Theory in Kisukuma
lexical and verb allomorphs. The theorys major aim is to handle multiple semantic
scopes of a derived lexeme following the way native speakers use language in
their natural settings. Two reasons motivated the current paper (1) No Kisukuma
literature has been written on morphosemantics despite the existence of a plethora
of literature (2) failure of many morphological elegances in handling multiple
semantic exponents of both lexical and the derived verbs senses in Kisukuma, this
is what motivated an investigation on accountability of Cognitive Grammar Theory
in Kisukuma derivative morphs. The study was a case study design whose aim was
to explore descriptions of words from a natural setting, thus two informants were
sampled purposively as they were pure Sukuma natives. Three instruments of data
collection were employed namely unstructured interview, Native intuition and
documentary review. The findings show that cognitive grammar theory is evident in
Kisukuma lexemes such as lisha, which means cause to feed or feed a person
poison/some food containing poison. Therefore, semantically, such multiple
interpretations are well configured in the Cognitive Grammar as meaning is
analysed in both configurations of the domain from the mental entity of its units.
Thus, the theory encodes that the meaning of complex words needs both linguistics
and pragmatic embodiment to capture human experience in general
