THE CONCEPT OF COOK AND EAT: A SEMANTICS ASPECT OF COOK AND EAT VERBS IN EWE

The discourse of this paper is on properties of meaning surrounding COOK and EAT verbs in Ewe. Cooking and eating are crucial activities undertaken by flora and fauna species. These phenomena are universal, easily perceptible and basic in human classifications. Conceptualizing COOK and EAT is subjective and differs across languages and contexts. The Ewe language uses descriptive sets of rich mechanisms to establish meaning and its variants. The concepts of COOK and EAT have fine-grained meanings concerning events and contexts, defining their performances. A cursory look 
is also taken on swallowing verbs which are negligible end products of eating. The study found ɖa and ɖu respectively depicting ‘cook’ and ‘eat’ in Ewe and there are verbs that elicit other cooking and eating forms under each. The concepts show ‘we cook to eat and we eat cooked foods’ as we describe the processes, manner and other factors defining cook and eat actions. The cooking and eating verbs describe the medium and process in which the ‘cooking’ and the ‘eating’ take place. Detailed discussions on the concepts and relations between cooking and eating in Ewe reveal the presence of precise and specific verbs establishing the meanings. Exploring syntactic constructions 
and effects of the verbs reveal descriptive and typological perspectives persuading their meanings. The data drawn is by elicitation from two adult respondents each from four major dialect regions of the Ghana Ewe groups (Anlo, Avenor, Tongu and Eʋedome). These native speakers were consulted using recorded cook-and-eat video scripts and still pictures from the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 Department of Ewe Education Students’ Week Celebrations in the University of Education, Winneba.

Keywords: Concept, semantics, cook and eat, intelligibility, verbs, telicity