Evidence of Cognitive Grammar Theory in Kisukuma: A Morphosemantics Analysis

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