Advances in the Cross‐Linguistic Study of Ideophones

Abstract

Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory imagery found in many of the world's languages. They are noted for their special forms, distinct grammatical behaviour, rich sensory meanings, and interactional uses related to experience and evidentiality. This review surveys recent developments in ideophone research. Work on the semiotics of ideophones helps explain why they are marked and how they realise the depictive potential of speech. A true semantic typology of ideophone systems is coming within reach through a combination of language-internal analyses and language-independent elicitation tools. Documentation of ideophones in a wide variety of genres as well as sequential analysis of ideophone use in natural discourse leads to new insights about their interactional uses and about their relation to other linguistic devices like reported speech and grammatical evidentials. As the study of ideophones is coming of age, it sheds new light on what is possible and probable in human language.

Vision verbs dominate in conversation across cultures, but the ranking of non-visual verbs varies

“…Several of the languages have other lexical or grammatical features that are especially relevant to encoding perception. For example, Siwu, Avatime and Semai all have extensive inventories of ideophones or expressives, "marked words that depict sensory imagery" (Dingemanse 2012), comprising a specialized lexicon for perceptual experience (see also Dingemanse 2011;Tufvesson 2011). Semai has an unusually rich vocabulary for smell terms, a feature that is shared by other members of the Aslian language family (e.g., Burenhult and Majid 2011;Wnuk and Majid 2014), and Duna has a complex evidential system, whereby the information source for 2 For further information on the smaller, less well-described languages discussed, and/or further details on the language of perception in the languages of this study see, e.g.…”

Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones

“…Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory scenes like c'onc'on 'woven tightly', ulakpulak 'unbalanced, scary appearance' and colcol 'flowing liquid' in Korean, or mukumuku 'mumbling mouth movements', gelegele 'glittery appearance' and gbadara-gbadara 'a drunkard's wobbling gait' in Siwu, a Kwa language spoken in Ghana (Dingemanse 2012). They have been recognised as a major lexical class in West-African languages for at least 150 years, and equivalent phenomena have since been described in many languages across Asia and the Americas.…”

“…This survey complements reviews that focus on synthesizing current or recent work on ideophones (Dingemanse 2012;Akita 2015;Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2017;Svantesson 2017). It traces empirical discoveries and intellectual lineages that have been influential in shaping today's ideas about ideophones.…”

Expressiveness and system integration: On the typology of ideophones, with special reference to Siwu

“…Although the word classes of particular languages are best described in language-internal terms, languages may converge on similar solutions that merit a common label and a definition in comparative terms (Haspelmath 2010). Ideophones are defined here as MARKED WORDS THAT DEPICT SENSORY IMAGERY (Dingemanse 2012). This definition captures the structural, semiotic, and semantic properties shared by the Japanese, Semelai, and Gbeya word classes exemplified above.…”

“…Ideophones are noted for their marked forms and highly specific sensory meanings (Dingemanse 2012;Akita 2012), but also for their distinctive morphosyntactic behavior.…”