Lecture | This Time for Africa! series
Evaluative Adjectives in Igbo Language: Insights from ezigbo and ajọ
- Date
- Friday 13 June 2025
- Time
- Series
- This Time for Africa! series
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 2.11
Abstract
This study investigates the linguistic structures and socio-cultural connotations of the evaluativeadjectives ezigbo ‘good’ and ajọ ‘bad’ in the Igbo language. Drawing upon a corpus comprisingspoken and written Igbo texts, the research examines these adjectives’ syntactic positioning, semantic range, and pragmatic functions in everyday discourse. The findings indicate that ezigboand ajọ function as descriptors and as carriers of moral and cultural values withinIgbocommunicative practices. Although these adjectives have corresponding forms: ọma ‘good’ andọjọọ ‘bad’, which are semantically related, they differ syntactically; while ọma andọjọọtypically occur in post-nominal positions, ezigbo and ajọ appear pre-nominally. Furthermore, thestudy reveals that these pairs are not entirely interchangeable across all communicative contextsdespite their shared semantic properties. Beyond their basic qualifying and evaluative roles (e.g., ‘good/beautiful/handsome’ and ‘bad/evil/mean’), ezigbo and ajọ also serve emphatic functions. In such cases, they intensify the meaning of the nouns they modify, as exemplifiedinexpressions like ezigbo ibu or ajọ ibu ‘too/terribly fat/big’. Their role as emphatic markersfurther enables them to generate ironic or contrastive meanings, such as in ajọ mma ‘strikingbeauty’ and ezigbo asị ‘blatant lie’, where the adjectives invert the expected valence of the noun. The study also highlights the metaphorical usage of these adjectives in Igbo culture; for instance, ezigbo ákwá does not imply ‘good cry’ in a literal sense but rather connotes ‘intense or grievousweeping’. These syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic dimensions of ezigbo and ajọarecontextually analyzed to underscore their significance within Igbo linguistic and cultural frameworks as indicating positive negativism and negative positivism.