Ideophone Totally Explained

Everything about Ideophone totally explained

Ideophones are a type of words used by speakers to convey a vivid impression of a certain sensation or sensory perception, for example 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 don't think it's 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. In some languages, an ideophone is a feature of reduplication.
The word class of ideophones is often called phonosemantic to indicate that it isn't 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 due to the fact that ideophones often transcend traditional categorizational boundaries in languages, thus providing a problem to the generally orderly divided grammatical classes.

Characteristics

An oft-cited definition of the notion of ideophone is the one by Doke 1935:118: ť 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 convey aspects of events that can be experienced sensorially. Reduplication figures quite prominently in ideophones, often bringing in a sense of repetition or plurality. A well known instance of ideophones are onomatopoeic words, for example, 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 (for example 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 (for example narrative contexts) and are rarely encountered in written language. In other languages (for example 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 (for example Welayta, Yir-Yiront, Finnish). In others, ideophones pervade many different word classes and syntactic constructions (for example 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).

Examples

Cantonese (romanizations given in Jyutping)

— quickly (as in , 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, for example tytinä< Russian stúden "aspic", but also symbolises "wobblyness"

Onomatopoetic frequentative and momentane verbs, for example 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 glitterFurther Information

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