Semantic Fields and Collocational Restriction: Insights from Igbo

Abstract

This work has considered the field theory in semantics which has to do with semantic fields and collocation. It is an established fact that there exists an inter-related network of words or what we call semantic field. Words of a language belong to different groups, words of each groups are related in one way or the other and are said to belong to the same semantic field. Based on their relationship there is always a collocational restriction in their usage. These networks and collocation are built on sense relations in a language (Syal and Jindal 155). Based on this fact, some sense relations were considered in this work in other to bring the term ‘semantic field’ home. Some collocates obtainable in Igbo were identified. Furthermore, the three kinds of collocational restrictions identified by (Palmer 79) were analyzed and illustrated using Igbo examples. However, it was also noted that just as some other languages, collocational restrictions are not applicable to all lexical items in Igbo. In other words, some words have no specific collocational restrictions.