African ideophones

Childs, George Tucker

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511751806.013

Cited by 126 publications

(101 citation statements)

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“…Similarly, in Aslian languages, "expressives constitute a third major form-class comparable in magnitude to nouns and verbs" (Matisoff 2003: 50). Many grammatical descriptions characterise ideophones as an open class (Childs 1994a) and when specific numbers are mentioned, they often run into the thousands (Table 4). The precise numbers are less important than what they imply about grammatical significance and functional load.…”

Section: Typology: Ideophones As a Major Lexical Classmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones

Dingemanse

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Ideophones (also known as expressives or mimetics, and including onomatopoeia) have been systematically studied in linguistics since the 1850s, when they were first described as a lexical class of vivid sensory words in West-African languages. This paper surveys the research history of ideophones, from its roots in African linguistics to its fruits in general linguistics and typology around the globe. It shows that despite a recurrent narrative of marginalisation, work on ideophones has made an impact in many areas of linguistics, from theories of phonological features to typologies of manner and motion, and from sound symbolism to sensory language. Due to their hybrid nature as gradient vocal gestures that grow roots in discrete linguistic systems, ideophones provide opportunities to reframe typological questions, reconsider the role of language ideology in linguistic scholarship, and rethink the margins of language. With ideophones increasingly being brought into the fold of the language sciences, this review synthesises past theoretical insights and empirical findings in order to enable future work to build on them.

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Section: Typology: Ideophones As a Major Lexical Classmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones

Dingemanse

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…African languages and many others use a lot of ideophones, "marked words that depict sensory imagery" (Dingemanse 2012: 655 andcf. Dingemanse 2011;Childs 1994Childs , 2015Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz 2001;Dingemanse et al 2016). Japanese dictionaries list around 4.500 sound symbolic words (Imai & Kita 2014;Oszmiańska 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Two Meanings of Sound Symbolism

Elsen

2017

Open Linguistics

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This article deals with sound symbolism and the ways to interpret sound symbolic phenomena. Sound symbolism appears to be a universal phenomenon but linguists tend to neglect it or offer heterogeneous approaches and definitions. This paper is concerned with the role of motivation, as assumed in cases like cuckoo, and the question whether some sound symbolic effects might be the result of acquired statistical knowledge about the language system. The author argues that several aspects of sound symbolism such as natural/iconic or habitual relationships between sound and (facets of) referents interact but should be considered separately to gain a more realistic insight into the working of sound symbolism.

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“…Ideophones have rarely been studied from areal or comparative perspectives, partly due to beliefs that they are unstable and have no clear etymologies (Childs 1994a;Blench 2010). One of the factors influencing the borrowability of linguistic items is the degree of system integration: this explains, for instance, why grammatical morphemes are less commonly borrowed than free-standing content words (Matras 2007;Enfield 2008).…”

Section: Implications For Ideophone Typologymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Dingemanse

2017

STUF - Language Typology and Universals

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Ideophones are often described as words that are highly expressive and morphosyntactically marginal. A study of ideophones in everyday conversations in Siwu (Kwa, eastern Ghana) reveals a landscape of variation and change that sheds light on some larger questions in the morphosyntactic typology of ideophones. This article documents a trade-off between expressiveness and morphosyntactic integration, with high expressiveness linked to low integration and vice versa. It also describes a pathway for deideophonization and finds that frequency of use influences the degree to which ideophones can come to be more like ordinary words. The findings have implications for processes of (de) ideophonization, ideophone borrowing, and ideophone typology. A key point is that the internal diversity we find in naturally occurring data, far from being mere noise, is patterned variation that can help us to get a handle on the factors shaping ideophone systems within and across languages.

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African ideophones

Cited by 126 publications

References 0 publications

Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones

Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones

The Two Meanings of Sound Symbolism

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

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