Cognitive domains of the sense relation of selected Igbo verbs

•That verbs are polysemous if their literal and metaphorical senses are radially related.•That Igbo verb of hearing nụ́ also encodes two other perceptive senses, smell & taste.•That it is pertinent to analyse verbs and their components in contexts of usage.•That translation has a great impact on verbs' polysemy senses.•That the studied verbs can bear abstract, concrete and figurative senses.

The question of the number of senses in an Igbo verb has remained topical in Igbo syntax and semantics. The structuralist and generative analysis of Igbo verbs that dominated previous studies neglected the study of individual lexical meanings in favour of compositional semantic structures. So, it could be said that the sense relations and cognitive domains of the Igbo verbs in relation to the structures formed in context were outside the focus of previous works. The aim of the paper, therefore, is to explore the cognitive domains of the sense relation of selected Igbo perception verbs hụ́ and nụ́ in contexts using the polysemy analysis of lexical semantics. The work adopts the descriptive research method. Two Igbo literary works: Ihe Aghasaa, the Igbo translation of the novel Things Fall Apart, and Jụọ Obinna, were examined to identify the semantic vagaries of the verbs under investigation. Data were collected through concordance using the e-logon software. The findings show that the verbs are polysemous. Also, the image schemata of hụ́ and nụ́ show that they do not only encode the acquisition of sense data through the eyes, nose or tongue; rather, there is a semantic extension from physical perception to mental cognition.