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.