Selectional restriction in Idanre cooking verbs

A verb is a universal concept that is important when making a meaningful sentence. The term cooking verb is a segment under verb. Some scholars have worked on cooking verbs in other languages like Igbo. However, selectional restriction has not been the focus for analyzing cooking verbs. This research is to investigate the restrictions verb place on their object arguments, by introducing the semantic relationship between a verb and an object noun. This ensures the filtering out of object nouns that cannot co-occur with the verb. The research adopts the standard theory as a theoretical framework. The method of data collection is through one-on-one interaction with the competent native speakers of Idanre in Ondo state. The informants were ten in total, three male and seven female, which are within the age range of 50-70. The instrument used for data collection is a recorder. The research found that the verb of cooking can classified into pre-cooking, cooking and post-cooking verbs. There is a generic cooking verb that can collocate with any object argument.