| dc.description.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. | en_US |
