A Contrastive Analysis of Fruit and Kinship Semantic Fields in English and Nembe Language

Abstract

Languages encode human experience through structured lexical systems that reflect the ecological, cultural, and cognitive environments of their speakers. A semantic field, understood as an organised set of words representing a domain of meaning, provides a framework for examining how languages classify reality. This article presents a contrastive analysis of fruit terminology and kinship vocabulary in English and Nembe, a Niger Congo language spoken in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The study is informed by the Sapir Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity and grounded in anthropological approaches to kinship classification. English data were drawn from standard lexicographic sources, while Nembe data were obtained from a published dictionary and validated through consultation with native speakers. Findings reveal cross linguistic differences in lexical organisation. English shows a highly differentiated fruit taxonomy with categories such as berries, citrus fruits, melons, and tropical fruits. Many of these have no equivalents in Nembe due to ecological absence and cultural dietary patterns. For example, berries and melons are not lexicalised in Nembe, reflecting their limited environmental presence. In the kinship domain, English uses a fine grained nuclear family system with distinct terms for cousin, aunt, uncle, and affinal relations. Nembe, however, employs a compact relational system in which cousin and sibling distinctions are merged, and relationships are expressed through descriptive compounding and reduplication. These contrasts create challenges for Nembe learners of English, who must acquire new lexical categories and conceptual distinctions. The study recommends culturally responsive pedagogy and highlights the need to document indigenous semantic systems as part of Nigeria’s linguistic heritage and identity.