LEXICAL SEMANTIC VARIATIONS IN LUTIRICHI HYPONYMS

Abstract

Studies have shown that hyponymy is evident in all languages and the senses of words in hyponymic relationships do vary from one language to another. However, failure to apply the correct meanings might hinder communicability among language users in given contexts. This study investigated the lexical semantic variations of hyponyms in Lutirichi, a Luhya language which is spoken in the Western part of Kenya. The aim was to investigate how some meanings in Lutirichi hyponyms are sometimes altered in their context of use to create occasion-specific senses based on interaction among concepts, pragmatic principles and contextual information. Further, the present study also sought to investigate why some hyponyms in Lutirichi have been borrowed from Kiswahili and English resulting to meaning variations in the usage of such words among the users due to varied occasion specific senses. The study objectives were to; categorize the hierarchical relationships in Lutirichi hyponyms, examine contextual meaning variations in the Lutirichi hyponyms and account for the role of entailment in Lutirichi hyponyms. The study applied a descriptive design. The respondents were selected from Lutirichi native speakers found in Hamisi Sub-County, through purposive sampling. The data collected was through word lists and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). The units of analysis were hyponyms in Lutirichi in the form of words. Data collected was analyzed thematically and presented in descriptive form. The data was analyzed within the tenets and the principles of the Usage-Based Approach Theory (UBAT) (Bybee & Beckener,2010) which argues that grammar is a derivative of language, not a prerequisite and the Semantic Field Theory (Boran,2018) which postulates that, the vocabulary of a language is organized into fields within which words interrelate and define each other in various ways. For instance, a sense of a word can only be fully resoluted in terms of contrasts in which it stands with other words in the field. The findings of the present study established that the Lutirichi hyponyms are categorized in hierarchical relationships and multiple of layers just like in other languages, although there is significant difference when it comes to the hierarchical relationships and multiples of layers. It was also established that Lutirichi has borrowed and coined some hyponyms from English and Kiswahili in order to provide for inadequate hyponyms in the formation of hierarchical relationships and multiple of layers which is a major characteristic of hyponymy. Since some hyponyms in Lutirichi are words borrowed from other languages such as Swahili and English, it was discovered that there are variations in the usage of such words. A part from the borrowed words it was also observed that there was meaning variations in Lutirichi hyponyms. The findings of the present study also established that the role of entailment in Lutirichi hyponyms is lost during the usage. The study was significant since it contributes to existing scholarly works in lexical semantics by highlighting the resultant meaning variations that manifest in the hyponyms of a language derived from the usage of a word and not the traditional semantic meaning.