Lexical Creativity in the Cameroonian Musical Landscape: The Case of Selected Songs of Lapiro De Mbanga

Abstract: Linguistic competence is not given to everyone. Words are meant to be used in and out of context, so using a word and making it fit perfectly into another context shows an individual’s capability of being creative. This paper aims at showing the different lexical creative processes in selected songs by the Cameroonian born musician, Lapiro de Mbanga and his ability to give a completely different interpretation to the words, yet passing across a message using different word formation processes. Using a qualitative research method, this paper employs the theory of semantic to give meaning to the lexical items. Findings indicate that out of the eight lexical creative processes and semantic features, affixation is the most commonly used word formation process whereas onomatopoeia is the least. Still, a word formation process leads to another word formation process: compounding leading to the word formation process; neologism. Again, we have multiple word formation processes where one word is formed using two-word formation processes.