A Cognitive Semantic Analysis of Hausa Personifications

This paper investigates the cognitive aspect of Hausa Personifications. The objective of the study is to discover the Hausa personifications found in the language expressions as a result of feature mappings from animate concepts to inanimate ones. The other objective is to come up with a cognitive semantic analysis of the Hausa personifications. The studied personifications are metaphorical and the Conceptual Metaphor Theory of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) is used as a guide frame in mapping the attributive features of the living entity to the inanimate ones. The observation technique is used in collecting the data for the study. One of the findings of the study reveals the kind of features merged between the animate and the inanimate concepts to form the Hausa personifications. Another important finding of the research indicates that the attributive features attached to animate entities are mapped upon the inanimate concepts conceptually to make the Hausa expressions personified. And finally, the study considered the analyzed Hausa personifications as similar to dead metaphors.