An Analysis of the Role of Procedural Meaning in the Understanding of Utterances in Gikuyu
Abstract
It is possible for people to identify the intended meaning of speaker’s utterances. This
distinguishes them from other animals. The speaker’s role is to make sure that the hearer uses
less processing effort as much as possible to interpret utterances. The less the processing
effort the hearer uses to interpret the speaker’s intended meaning, the more relevant the
utterance will be to him and vice versa. Procedural meanings are important because they help
hearers to identify the speaker’s intended meaning. Gikuyu interjections and ideophones
which are varieties of procedural meaning, help the hearers to interpret in the appropriate
context. The study has examined Gikuyu ideophones and interjections, which are items of
procedural meaning. This study will show how these procedures help the hearers to interpret
and comprehend utterances. This study has shown that procedural meanings helps hearers to
assign reference, they are also used anaphorically, they derive cognitive effects which makes
Gikuyu utterances more relevant and thus effective communication takes place. This study
has investigated how Gikuyu ideophones and interjections guide the hearer to fetch reference
form the context, this makes the hearer to derive positive cognitive effects thus enhancing
communication. The study is important as it explains how Gikuyu interjections and
ideophones contribute to linguistic communication and due to their procedural nature, they
can be used to transmit a condensed thought or proposition, which the speaker intends the
hearer to entertain. This study has shown that the hearer relies on the contextual elements
signaled by Gikuyu interjections and ideophones.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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