OHAZURUME - Unizik Journal of Culture and Civilization

Semantic prosody involves the tendency of words to line up with either positively or negatively evaluated words. In addition, this possibility of negative or positive associations of words could be confused with the phenomenon of negative positivism, which has been established for the Igbo language by Romanus Egudu. However, despite the various advances in the study of semantic prosody in mostly European and Asian languages, there has been no attempt to study this phenomenon in the Igbo language. The purpose of the study is to examine the realization of the phenomenon of semantic prosody in the Igbo language. It relates this to cross-linguistic findings on the phenomenon, in addition to distinguishing it from the well-established phenomenon of negative positivism. Sixteen Igbo literary works constituted the corpora used for the study. The AntConC3.5.7 software was used to elicit the data as they occurred in context. The concordance lines of me?‘happen’ was analyzed through both descriptive approach and the application of the theoretical framework of Extended Unit of Meaning-Oriented approach to demonstrate that -me?‘happen’ displays negative evaluative meaning. In addition, extracts of negative positivism that were analyzed reveal that negative positivism differs from semantic prosody because its meaning is basically on figurative usages. On the basis of the examined data, it could be established that the phenomenon of semantic prosody exists in the Igbo language. Hence, the Igbo language confirms the view that semantic prosody is a cross-linguistic, natural phenomenon in human language. Finally, this also helps to further distinguish the phenomenon from negative positivism, which seems to be a peculiar Pan-Igbo attribute.

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