A SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF POLYSEMY IN UMULUMGBE DIALECT OF IGBO

Abstract

The objectives of this study are to investigate the Umulumgbe dialect of Igbo to find out if polysemous words exist in the dialect, to examine such polysemous words (if they are available in the dialect) to determine whether they have metaphorical meaning in addition to their literal meaning and to find out if their meanings are related to the prototype. As much as there are works done on polysemy in some parts of Igbo, there is no study on the polysemy of Umulumgbe dialect of Igbo. This study adopts a descriptive qualitative research design. Fifty polysemous words were collected through oral interview using purposive sampling technique. Data for this work were also collected using Ibadan Wordlist of 400 basic items. The selected words were only the ones that are polysemous. Twelve informants-six males and six females- (who are native speakers from the six villages in the town) were interviewed through an unstructured oral interview, using a tape-recorder. The data were analyzed using the theoretical framework of Cognitive Semantics as propounded by Geeraets (2010). The findings show that polysemous words exist in the dialect and only few polysemous words in Umulumgbe dialect of Igbo have both literal and metaphorical meanings. The findings also reveal that only a few of such words in the dialect are related to the prototype.