The semantics of all Oromo adposition of verticality the case of irra ' oll/ove.:'
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Date
2008-11
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This paper is about the semantics of one of the Oromo adposition of verticality, namely irra,
'on/over'. In cognitive linguistics it is argued that lexical items exhibit category of meaning
whereby a single lexic al item can have a primary meaning which gives rise to various extended
mea nings. This meaning extension is obtained by the virtue of Conceptual Metaphor.
With the assumption th at meaning is encyclopaedic instead of dictionaric, and words are
pol ysemic by nature, it has been discussed that this Oromo adposition yields a number of
metaphorical meanings which result from the primary spat ial senses. Data obtained from
introspection supplemented with elic itation have been anal yzed and it has been found that irra as
its primary sense des ignates a trajector located higher than a landmark in contact or without
contact with each other. And in the case of the absence of contact between a trajector and a
landmark, the trajector is conceived to be within the potential reach or sphere of influence of the
landmark. From this primary spatial meaning of the adposition, various extended meanings have
been systematically deri ved in li ght of the Theory of Conceptual Metaphor.
Thus, it has been shown that the Oromo postposition irra is a highly polysemous lexi cal i' em.
From primary meaning of relat ing a trajector located higher than a landmark, a number of abstrac t
metaphorically ex tended senses can be systematically deri ved from the proto-scene.
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Oromo adposition