Comments on: On the history of the term ‘ideophone’

By: jafari

jafari — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:36:43 +0000

i have observed also that,ideophones can be lexicalised upon frequent uses,if this is the case,then it not fair making them a group of its own,whwt do you say?

By: jafari

jafari — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:32:40 +0000

it is very intesting topic and i wish to do something on ideophones:the question is, why was it thought that doke coined the term while there are evidences which show otherwise?again where can i get the literature on the topic?but,why this area is not well known so far?
MY ARGUMENTS:ideophones indicate some behaviours of lexical words,why scholars put them in a group of its own?why not inserting them into various groups of which they fit syntactically?if an ideophone shows a verb property then put it there.

By: mark

mark — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 13:47:52 +0000

You are quite right in suggesting that every language has some means for expressivity. However, as outlined here, I would propose to use the term expressives/ideophones only for those languages in which expressive vocabulary forms a clearly identifiable form class (either a grammatical category or an ideophonic subset of the lexicon). And by 'identifiable', I mean definable by a constellation of phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic criteria. (It has been pointed out e.g. by GT Childs that such a class may be most profitably thought of as a prototype category.) Taking that perspective, I think it is very significant that so many languages of the world have somehow lexicalized expressivity in such a systematic way (a little more on that here, under 'Why study expressive vocabulary?'). But certainly, your English examples fall under the expressive use of language. Christopher Potts has an NSF funded project on exactly those issues in English, and there are some interesting parallels to be drawn between English expressive vocabulary and expressives/ideophones in languages such as I have been highlighting here. As for your second question, no, ideophones are not at all seen as vulgar (they do make for very effective insults, but that's only a secondary function, and one of minor importance in those languages I've worked with; I do have some interesting data on that). To the contrary: being able to use ideophones is often a sign of eloquency, and as such highly valued. There are vulgar ideophones, of course; but the Siwu ideophones I've gathered so far cover a much wider spectrum than swear words and the like in English. And the same holds for collections of Ewe, Yoruba, Somali, Gbaya, Gbeya, ChiTumbuka, Korean, Mandarin, and Semai ideophones I've looked at. Anyway, great questions. I'll be addressing these issues at more length in future postings.

By: Khawaji

Khawaji — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 10:08:05 +0000

Wouldn’t this definition mean that every language has ideophones? It would be hard to imagine a language that does not express statements strongly through evocative imagery – I suggest the use of swears and vulgarities in english is quite often ideophonous. They employ anatomical and sexual terms which they don’t mean literally in order to evoke a force of emotion or shock which is non-representational. It makes me wonder how expressives/ideophones are seen socially in the African cultures you have cited thus far? are they considered vulgar or unwholesome in some way?

By: mark

mark — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:02:50 +0000

The OED is citing a printed card ... Thanks! Do you happen to have access to that card? I'd be interested to hear more about the context in which Ellis used the term ideophone. We’ll be clarifying our bibliography to show that this is not a published item. Perfect. You might want to take note that in the online version, Ellis' name is linked to another work entirely: this is where the link leads to. (I've checked that work, and am pretty sure ideophone isn't found in there. For those interested, an online version of one volume of that work can be found at the Internet Archive: On early English pronunciation )

By: Jesse Sheidlower

Jesse Sheidlower — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:25:06 +0000

As I wrote in LanguageHat’s comments:

The OED is citing a printed card announcing two of the London Dialectical Society’s November meetings, mailed by Ellis to James Murray (they were friends), and subsequently deposited by Murray in the OED archives.

We’ll be clarifying our bibliography to show that this is not a published item.