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Ideophones are a type of words used by speakers to evoke a vivid impression of a certain sensation or sensory perception, e.g. smell, color, shape, sound, action, or movement. Ideophones are attested in all languages of the world, however, languages differ in the extent to which they make use of them. Because of this, some linguists do not think it is useful to talk about a universal 'class' of ideophones, and maintain that the concept makes sense only within the context of an individual language. In this narrow sense, the validity of the class of ideophones is rarely disputed.

The word class of ideophones is often called phonosemantic to indicate that it is not a grammatical word class in the traditional sense of the word (like 'verb' or 'noun'), but rather a grouping based on form and meaning.

In the discipline of Linguistics, ideophones have long been overlooked or treated as mysterious words. Voeltz and Kilian-Hatz (2001:2) suggest this might be because ideophones often transcend traditional categorizational boundaries in languages, thus providing a problem to the generally orderly divided grammatical classes.

[edit] Characteristics

An oft-cited definition of the notion of ideophone is the one by Doke 1935:118:

Ideophone

‘A vivid representation of an idea in sound. A word, often onomatopoeic, which describes a predicate, qualificative or adverb in respect to manner, colour, sound, smell, action, state or intensity.’

Ideophones evoke sensory events. Reduplication figures quite prominently in ideophones, often conveying a sense of repetition or plurality present in the evoked event. A well known instance of ideophones are onomatopoeic words, i.e., words imitating the sound (of the event) they refer to. Some ideophones may be derived from onomatopoeic notions. A case in point is the English ideophonic verb to tinkle, which is likely to be derived from an imitation of a brief metallic sound.

It is maintained by some (e.g. Kilian-Hatz 2001:157, Kock 1985) that ideophones denote a complete utterance and as such have a sentence-like character. However, reports from other languages (Cantonese, Yoruba, Hausa, Ewe, to name a few) challenge this statement, showing instead that ideophones can be fully integrated into sentences, just like ordinary verbs and nouns. This difference of opinion is attributable to the fact that languages vary in the manner they make use of ideophones.

Languages also differ in the context in which ideophones are used. In some languages, ideophones are primarily used in spoken language (e.g. narrative contexts) and are rarely encountered in written language. In other languages (e.g. Ewe, Japanese), ideophones can be freely used in all registers. In general, however, ideophones tend to occur more extensively in spoken language because of their expressive or dramaturgic function.

Ideophones are restricted to certain grammatical classes in some languages (e.g. Welayta, Yir-Yiront, Finnish). In others, ideophones pervade many different word classes and syntactic constructions (e.g. Mundang, Ewe, Siwu, Sotho). A common feature across languages, especially in narrative contexts, is the possibility of introducing ideophones via a verbum dicendi, for example:

• É-ƒú así nu bé bóbóbó   (3SG-strike hand mouth like IDEOPHONE)   ‘S/He raised an alarm and went “bóbóbó”.’ (Ewe, adapted from Ameka 2001).

[edit] Examples

Cantonese (romanizations given in Jyutping)

• 嗱(laa4) 嗱(laa2) 聲(seng1) — quickly (as in 嗱(laa4) 嗱(laa2) 聲(seng1) 做(zou6), literally meaning "la la sound do" but actually meaning "do [it] quickly")

English

• bling-bling — glitter, sparkle -> richness, glamour
• hippetyhop — ideophonic adverb of manner (as in "The rabbit goes hippetyhop")
• gobble — to devour in greedy gulps

Ewe

• gbadzaa — flat, spreading out over a wide area

Finnish

• Various expressive loans, e.g. tytinä< Russian stúden "aspic", but also symbolises "wobblyness"
• Onomatopoetic frequentative and momentane verbs, e.g. momentane-frequentative lätsähdellä "to splat over a larger area, suddenly and repeatedly", from onomatopoeia läts "splat".

Japanese

• doki doki — heartbeat -> excitement
• kira kira — glitter
• shiin — silence

Vietnamese

• loảng xoảng — sound of glass breaking to pieces or metallic objects falling to the ground
• hớt hơ hớt hải (also hớt ha hớt hải) — hard gasps -> in extreme hurry, in panic, panic-stricken
• lục đục — the sound of hard, blunt (and likely wooden) objects hitting against each other -> disagreements and conflicts inside a group or an organisation

Yoruba

• fẹrẹgẹdẹ — big and wide
• róbótó — little and round (object)
• gbẹ̀m — round and big
• gbàyàù — open and loose

Navajo

• dil dil — sound of several people walking
• ts'os ts'os — sound of sucking or kissing
• k'az k'az — sound of shearing sheep

Hindi/Urdu

• Chamak chamk — sparkles or glitter

[edit] See also

• Sound symbolism (Phonosemantics)
• Primal sounds
• Synesthesia
• Reduplication
• Onomatopoeia
• Japanese sound symbolism

[edit] References

• Ameka, Felix Kofi (2001) ‘Ideophones and the adjective class in Ewe’. In Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz 2001, 25-48.
• Awoyale, Yiowola (1989) ‘Reduplication and the status of ideophones in Yoruba. Journal of West African Languages 19, 1, 15-34.
• Bodomo, Adams. A corpus of Cantonese Ideophones. Online publication (PDF).
• Childs, G. Tucker (1994) ‘African Ideophones’. Hinton et al (eds.) Sound Symbolism, 178-204. Cambridge: CUP.
• Doke, C.M. (1935) Bantu linguistic terminology. London: Longmans, Green.
• Kilian-Hatz (2001) ‘Universality and diversity’. In Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz 2001, 155-164.
• Kock, I (1985) ‘The speech act theory: A preliminary investigation’. In South African Journal of African Languages, 5, 49-53.
• Voeltz, F.K. Erhard & Kilian-Hatz, Christa (eds.) (2001). Ideophones. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.