Comments on: ‘Do ideophones really stand out that much?’ (with sound clips) http://ideophone.org/do-ideophones-stand-out-that-much/ Sounding out ideas on African languages, sound symbolism, and expressivity Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:04:29 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Mark Dingemanse http://ideophone.org/do-ideophones-stand-out-that-much/comment-page-1/#comment-2561 Mark Dingemanse Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:55:49 +0000 http://ideophone.org/?p=1663#comment-2561 Oh I see :) Well anyway, in a sense it certainly does have to do with the fact that all three have the ideophone utterance-finally. As soon as the ideophone is burdened with any serious morphosyntax (such as an adjectival suffix or subject agreement, as in the remaining two constructions), it is demoted from the utterance-final place and loses a great deal of its expressiveness (you may have seen this in the RRG or the WOCAL slides). Oh I see :) Well anyway, in a sense it certainly does have to do with the fact that all three have the ideophone utterance-finally. As soon as the ideophone is burdened with any serious morphosyntax (such as an adjectival suffix or subject agreement, as in the remaining two constructions), it is demoted from the utterance-final place and loses a great deal of its expressiveness (you may have seen this in the RRG or the WOCAL slides).

]]> By: bulbul http://ideophone.org/do-ideophones-stand-out-that-much/comment-page-1/#comment-2560 bulbul Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:39:15 +0000 http://ideophone.org/?p=1663#comment-2560 That "sampling bias alert" referred to me making half-assed conclusions based on three examples. I certainly didn't mean to accuse you of anything, apologies if it sounded that way :) Thank you for the explanation. I took a look at slides to one of your presentations in the mean time (which I should have done in the first place) and understood what you meant right away. That “sampling bias alert” referred to me making half-assed conclusions based on three examples. I certainly didn’t mean to accuse you of anything, apologies if it sounded that way :)
Thank you for the explanation. I took a look at slides to one of your presentations in the mean time (which I should have done in the first place) and understood what you meant right away.

]]> By: Mark Dingemanse http://ideophone.org/do-ideophones-stand-out-that-much/comment-page-1/#comment-2558 Mark Dingemanse Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:35:19 +0000 http://ideophone.org/?p=1663#comment-2558 What I mean is "constructions" in the linguistic sense. The first I call the Utterance construction, in which the ideophone, quite simply, forms an utterance on its own. The second is the Adverbial construction, which has the ideophone as modifier within a predicate phrase. The third is an Attributive construction, with the ideophone as complement of a two-place predicate. This is quite like an identity construction; it involves verbs like <em>se</em> ‘be’, <em>ba</em> ‘have’, <em>bara</em> ‘make’ and the perceptual verb <em>nyɔ</em> ‘look’. When I say that these represent the most common constructions, I mean that (1) these are three out of five constructions in which ideophones occur in Siwu, and (2) these three constructions account for 88% of 230 ideophone <em>tokens</em> in my corpus. So there's no sampling bias here; in a sense, I couldn't have picked more typical examples. What I mean is “constructions” in the linguistic sense. The first I call the Utterance construction, in which the ideophone, quite simply, forms an utterance on its own. The second is the Adverbial construction, which has the ideophone as modifier within a predicate phrase. The third is an Attributive construction, with the ideophone as complement of a two-place predicate. This is quite like an identity construction; it involves verbs like se ‘be’, ba ‘have’, bara ‘make’ and the perceptual verb nyɔ ‘look’.

When I say that these represent the most common constructions, I mean that (1) these are three out of five constructions in which ideophones occur in Siwu, and (2) these three constructions account for 88% of 230 ideophone tokens in my corpus. So there’s no sampling bias here; in a sense, I couldn’t have picked more typical examples.

]]> By: bulbul http://ideophone.org/do-ideophones-stand-out-that-much/comment-page-1/#comment-2555 bulbul Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:05:39 +0000 http://ideophone.org/?p=1663#comment-2555 To clarify: the gentleman in question spoke an uindentified African language with the occasional English word thrown in. He spoke quite fast, so there may have been 40-60 words in those 15-20 seconds it took me to navigate the crowds. I'm pretty sure that there were at least three more English words in addition to that "you know", but I can't for the life of me remember which ones. Thank you for the examples, they do sound very much like what I heard. The redu/tri/pentaplications do stand out, but I suspect it's the change in prosody that caught my ear. By the way, what exactly do you mean by "most common ideophone constructions"? Surely not "most frequent ideophone words" or is it? And does it have anything to do with the fact that these three seem to (sample bias alert) occur clause-/sentence-finally? To clarify: the gentleman in question spoke an uindentified African language with the occasional English word thrown in. He spoke quite fast, so there may have been 40-60 words in those 15-20 seconds it took me to navigate the crowds. I’m pretty sure that there were at least three more English words in addition to that “you know”, but I can’t for the life of me remember which ones.
Thank you for the examples, they do sound very much like what I heard. The redu/tri/pentaplications do stand out, but I suspect it’s the change in prosody that caught my ear.
By the way, what exactly do you mean by “most common ideophone constructions”? Surely not “most frequent ideophone words” or is it? And does it have anything to do with the fact that these three seem to (sample bias alert) occur clause-/sentence-finally?

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