Category Archives: Ideophones

Ideophones are marked words that vividly evoke sensory events. They are found abundantly in Asian and African languages, as well as in some native American languages. As a class of words, they are relatively rare in Indo-European languages.

The sound of rain falling, in your ears

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More from the missed-while-I-was-in-the-field dept.: back in August, artisan jewelry shop My Word! featured a beautiful pair of earrings decorated with the Kisi ideophone bákàlà-bákàlà for ‘the sound of big, fat raindrops.’ I love the design, in which colour, shape and size work together to recreate the event evoked by the ideophone.

bákàlà 'big fat raindrops falling'

Earrings with the Kisi ideophone bákàlà-bákàlà, by My Word! jewelry

Kisi [kqs] is spoken by upwards of 250,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. It is a member of the Southern branch of Atlantic, fairly closely related to Temne, Gola, Sherbro, and Krim. Its ideophonic system is well-known through George T. Childs’ 1988 dissertation, The phonology and morphology of Kisi.

I decided to look up the ideophone written on the earrings, and sure enough, there it is on page 182: “bákàlà-bákàlà, sound of rain falling in single, heavy droplets”. It is one of those Kisi ideophones which always come in reduplicated form, which reinforces the happy match between the word and the product.

Behind My Word! is Joanna Taylor, a paper jewelry artist with an academic background in linguistics. I guess it figures that the linguistic data is accurate, right down to the tone marks (High-Low-Low). These earrings, along with two other Kisi pieces, are part of her Project Panglossia, in which she makes (at least) two pieces per week in a language other than English in celebration of 2008, the UN’s International Year of Languages. Lovely!

References

  1. Childs, George Tucker. 1988. The phonology and morphology of Kisi. PhD Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.

Somali ideophones revealed

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I missed it back in March, probably because I was in the field: a delightful post on ideophones in Somali over at Beautiful Horn of Africa. An intriguing introduction…

In this fast moving 21st Century of information superhighway, you should feel obligated to expose youself to the rest of the world so that your presence in words and deeds can be felt by others.
(…)
Watch out what I’m about to reveal.

…is followed by a veritable explosion of ideophonic vocabulary: “Fuuq is to drink heavy drinks like milkshake or creamy liquid; bacaac is the cry of the lamb while baac is a fool; fadfad is the bubbling of sticky cornmeal on a cooking pot; xaax is to feel cold; xuux is to instill fear in children; yaq is something nasty in appearance; aq is uttered when smoke disturbs one’s visibility; yar is astonishment; uf is bad smell; bash is for any object that split into pieces when dropped while bush is when a jelly-like substance falls on the floor then splits in to bish; shabaax is sound from sea waves or meandering river water; dhibiq is for falling droplets; dhaw dhaw and qaw qaw is scrubbing of metals; hatishow is to sneeze; qabac qabac is when an object is blown by the wind; …”

The stream of consciousness quality of the prose calls to mind what Gérard Diffloth calls the ‘expressive mood’. In another form, I have witnessed this phenomenon in live conversations, where ideophones tend to erupt in chunks rather than being distributed evenly over the full length of the conversation. Continue reading →

Early sources on African ideophones, part II: Vidal on Yoruba, 1852

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Part two of our series on early sources (part one is here) is dedicated to Reverend O. E. Vidal, M.A. who as early as 1852 made a number of very insightful comments on ideophones in Yoruba in the preface to Samuel Crowther’s Yoruba dictionary:

There is another very striking feature in the Yoruba language, which I feel unwilling to pass over in this memoir, although, at the present stage of our knowledge on the subject of African philology, it will not afford any help in assigning to this language its proper position on the ethnological chart. The adverb is a part of speech in which we do not commonly recognise any characteristic sufficiently prominent to become a distinctive mark of any language, either generic or specific. But in the case of the Yoruba there is a most observable peculiarity in the use of this part of speech, which must, I think, eventually prove to be such a distinctive mark. Speaking in general terms, we may say, that each individual adverb of qualification possesses an idiosyncrasy of its own which altogether incapacitates it from supplying the place of another. It contains within itself the idea of the word which it is employed to qualify, although, as to form and derivation, totally unconnected with that word. In this way “almost every adjective and verb has its own peculiar adverb to express its quality” or rather its degree. This peculiarity must certainly greatly increase the expressiveness of the language. (Vidal, p. 15-16)

Vidal’s reserved tone shows just how little known the phenomenon of ideophony was at the time of his writing. Yet his comments are incisive and to the point; he sums up pretty much of what is significant about ideophones. He continues: Continue reading →

Kanananana

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There are several ideophones in Siwu that have to do with silence. Here are a few examples:

mì-lo kanananana!
2PL-be.silent IDPH
(y’all) be silent kanananana!
a-rɛ kpooo-o?
2SG-sleep IDPH-Q
did you have a sound sleep?
lò-to lò-karɛ ɔ itɔ̃me a-ɣɛ à-to à-nyɔ mɛ gbigbini-gbi
1SG-PROG 1SG-ask 2SG:O message 2SG-stand 2SG-PROG 2SG-look 1SG:O IDPH-REDUP1
I’m asking you a question and you are standing looking at me gbigbinigbi!
ɔ̀-si mùnùmùnù
3SG-sit IDPH
he just sits mùnùmùnù (sickly without talking)

The implications of these four ideophones are different. The first one is perhaps the most general; it is often heard in requests for silence (esp. in the plural), but I’ve also heard it used to talk about the tranquility of the town. The second one, kpoo, is most commonly heard in the reply to the morning greeting lò yá mì ‘I greet you (pl.)’. It has a positive connotation of nocturnal silence and sound sleep. The other two both carry negative connonations: gbigbinigbi evokes a sulking silence, mùnùmùnù is silence of a more dim-witted, sickly type.

All this by way of announcing a scheduled period of radio silence during my two-month fieldtrip to Ghana from July to September 15th. I’ll be giving talks at the 26th West African Languages Conference in Winneba and the 2nd International Workshop on the GTM languages. The rest of the time I will be in Kawu, transcribing beautiful and sparkling conversation full of ideophones. In between times I may be able to post some snippets, but don’t expect too much — everything will be pretty much kanananana here. See you in September!

Adjectives and the gospel in Ewe

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Previously, we’ve looked at a perceptive account of ideophones in nineteenth-century Ewe by Joh. Bernard Schlegel. But Schlegel was not just a keen observator of the synchronic structure of Ewe, he also had clear ideas on where the language came from (damned primitivity) and where it was going (blessed enlightenment). A Pietist missionary above all else, Schlegel was quite sure that the coming of the Gospel would have a profound impact on the Ewe people — and on their language:

Dass die Ewe-Sprache in der Entfaltung und Entwicklung der Adjektiven noch so zurück ist, hat darin seinen Grund, daß sie viele Verben hat, welche schon an sich eine Eigenschaft ausdrücken. (…) Die Ansätze zu einer reicheren Entfaltung sind in die Sprache vorhanden, und wenn erst einmal das Evangelium und was in seinem Geleite folgt, in diese westafrikanischen Völker und Sprachen Eingang gefunden hat, so wird sich zeigen, welche schöpferische Momente in denselben (…) verborgen liegen. (Schlegel 1857:84)

That the Ewe language is still so backwards in the unfolding and development of adjectives, has its ground in the fact that it has many verbs that already express properties. (…) The prerequisites for a richer unfolding are available in the language, and when the Gospel with all its consequences will have found acceptance in these West African peoples and languages, it will be seen which moments of creation are lying dormant in them.

One and a half century later it would seem we are in the position to behold the awesome influence of the Gospel on the Ewe language. Alas, at last count, Ewe still has no more than five or six basic, underived adjectives (Ameka 1991) — not counting ideophones, that is (Ameka 2001). One wonders whether there is perhaps another area in the language where we may behold its beneficial effect. Or did the Gospel misfire (at least as far as Ewe adjectives go)? Anyway, what is probably most astonishing is how Schlegel in writing this passage could overlook the sparkling creativity so apparent in ideophones. The moral seems to be that if it’s not a damn adjective, it can’t be civilized, let alone sanctified.

References

  1. Ameka, Felix Kofi. 1991. Ewe: its grammatical constructions and illucutionary devices. PhD thesis, Australian National University.
  2. Ameka, Felix Kofi. 2001. Ideophones and the Nature of the Adjective Word Class in Ewe. In Ideophones, ed. F. K. Erhard Voeltz and Christa Kilian-Hatz, 25-48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  3. Noss, Philip A. 1999. The Ideophone: A Dilemma for Translation and Translation Theory. New Dimensions in African Linguistics and Languages, 261-272.
  4. Schlegel, Joh. Bernhard. 1857. Schlüssel der Ewesprache, dargeboten in den Grammatischen Grundzügen des Anlodialekts. Stuttgart.

Under the spell of ideophones

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One of the nice things about fieldtrips is getting immersed in another culture area with, for one thing, different news priorities. When in Ghana, I somehow find it relieving to read the news stories about the rise of herbal medicine, spectacular roundups of Nigerian armed robbers, local chieftaincy conflicts, and parcels of cocaine that miraculously turn into flour under the eyes of the police. Far better reading than the daily adventures of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Ghanaian newspapers are always vibrant and engaging, with lots of sharp columns and ample space for letters to the editor. As an example, take the following quote from a column titled ‘Jesus died for our sins, including our carbon sins’, which appeared in the Easter issue of The Spectator. It adresses the huge problem of environmental pollution through plastic packagings and litter.

Have you taken a peak into a gutter lately? Hmm-hmm!! Roadsides? Oh, and farmlands too! Plastic rubbish is literally swallowing us up. How I wish plastic is food we could eat so it’ll go away! But, no! Plastics and much of our increasing volume of rubbish stay put.
So with impudence, we are destroying this earth fuga fuga, manya manya, basa basa and even waa waa, with rubbish as our weapon. We take the earth for granted. We are behaving like the guy in the Jesus story about the Prodigal Son. It is as if we are telling God that He owes us and must replace this earth after we’ve messed it up. Our land, sea, rivers, gutters, backyards and roadsides all harbour secret sorrows as nonbiodegradable ‘bola’ precariously anchor themselves onto our national tapestry.

Dr. Doris Yaa Dartey, The Spectator, March 21, 2008, p. 24 (scan of the original, online version)

I’ve selected this fragment for the words in bold, which are of course ideophones. Wait a moment — ideophones? What are they doing here, in a sea of English words in the columns of a perfectly respectable newspaper with nation-wide distribution? At first sight, this doesn’t seem to mesh well with the literature, in which it is often stated that ideophones are not likely to occur in print. (The idea is that as a feature of conversations, narratives, and folklore, ideophones are thought to belong to the domain of spoken rather than written language.) But is this really a counterexample? Continue reading →

Waza waza

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waza waza

waza waza, Gomi 1989:193 · © 1989

I came across this lovely Japanese ideophone in my own copy of Gomi’s Illustrated Dictionary, and I’m sharing it waza waza just for you to enjoy.

References

  1. Gomi, Taro. 1989. An Illustrated Dictionary of Japanese Onomatopoeic Expressions. Transl. by J. Turrent. Tokyo: Japan Times.

Fieldwork snippet: What ideophones do

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A while ago I spent some time with a language assistant to work through a list of the Siwu ideophones I collected so far. There were some interesting metalinguistic comments on the function of ideophones. Here are three representative exchanges (MD = me, SA = assistant, MA = his daughter):

1

MD
What is gawungawun?
SA
Gawungawun… they are all the same thing [referring to a few previous ones, also ways of walking]
MD
Aha, no there must, no, they cannot be the same — they are different words!

SA
They are, eh, but what… it’s only describing how the person is walking [shrugs shoulders]
MD
yeah

2

MD
What about gbadaragbadara?
SA
Gbadaragbadaraa [laughs] It’s something… its just the s… its similar.
MD
Similar, yes. Not the same, but similar, uhuh.
SA
Yeah, similar. Let me see, gbadaragbadara or gadaragadara, that means uh… he is not serious or he is something like he is drunk…
MA
[calling from the kitchen] It’s just an adjective that we are using to describe the way the person is walking
MD
Eheh
SA
Yah

3

MD
What about hiriririri
SA
Oh… no… [doesn’t recognize the word]
MD
ki … rotate [points to the fan in the background]
SA
ite ki hiriririri, aa, okay, okay… yeah it’s just… no… so … just … you are just describing how it is turning [displaying an attitude of doubt as to whether this word has any use at all]
MD
yes, yeah
SA
ite ki hiriririri [it-PROG rotate hiririri] (makes rotating gesture)

The mildly dismissive attitude of SA is quite interesting, though not shared by most other speakers — I think it has to do with a certain level of education and perhaps some other sociolinguistic factors. For now I just want to draw attention to another aspect of these metalinguistic comments.

SA is saying that it is ‘just describing how it is turning’. That implies a difference between the statements ‘it is turning’ and ‘it is turning hiriririri’. In the first one, you do not specify how it is turning (i.e. which sensation it brings about); you merely describe the event that is going on. In the second one, you do more than this: an expressive depiction is added to the analytical description of the scene. This is one of the ways in which ideophones ‘pepper’ everyday speech in Siwu.

References

  1. Clark, Herbert H, and Richard J Gerrig. 1990. Quotations as Demonstrations. Language 66, no. 4:764-805.
  2. Walton, Kendall L. 1973. Pictures and Make-Believe. The Philosophical Review 82, no. 3:283-319.

Fieldwork snippet: What is the difference between these words?

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Hello from the field! I’m currently on a five-week trip to Kawu in the beautiful Volta Region, eastern Ghana (see the picture to the right), hence the irregular posting schedule. In line with my main business here, I will share some notes on doing fieldwork.

MD
What about gligli?
SA
Gligli is ‘round’
MD
But what about minimini?
SA
Minimini is also round. Uh… when you say giligili, it is something like an oval form, oval… [Avoiding eye-contact, drawing an egg-like shape on the table]… uhuh… but minimini … is errrr…. round.

One thing I noticed during fieldwork sessions is that if pressed to explain the difference between two words, people choose one of three strategies. The first strategy (A) is to insist that the words are just the same, that there really is no difference. This strategy is the most common perhaps, but it is easily defeated by pointing to the fact that the words are clearly different, so that there must be some difference.

The two remaining strategies are (B) making up a difference on the spot in the hope that I will faithfully write it down so that we can go on to the next item; and (C) honestly probing for the difference by imagining several different scenarios and trying out various utterances and gestures. The answers produced by those who follow strategy C are extremely valuable, because they provide lots of additional contextual information. This also makes it quite easy to distinguish strategies B and C; people following strategy B will be unnaturally quick in giving an answer and will not want to explain much more about it.

Note that it does not help to penalize assistants for using strategy B (e.g. by pointing out inconsistencies). They will only feel more uncomfortable. The best response is usually to do what they hope you will do: swiftly going on to the next item (don’t forget to leave a mark so that you can revisit the problem!). Smiling friendly and making clear that you are taking them seriously helps in restoring their peace of mind and will make strategy C more readily available to them.

Unfortunately, there are no language-helpers who will only ever employ strategy C. When a session has been going on for long, or when it gets all too inquisitive, there is a tendency to switch to strategy B even among the most helpful and sharp assistants. Take for example the following exchange between me and SA, who is normally quite particular about giving the ‘right’ meaning of words: Continue reading →

Fresh wild melon and meat full of gravy: food texture verbs in G|ui (Khoisan)

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Today’s dish of expressive vocabulary is particularly tasty. It comes from G|ui, a Khoisan language of Botswana. To Africanists, expressive words from Khoisan languages are of special interest because Khoisan has been claimed on various occasions to lack ideophones, otherwise thought to be one of those linguistic traits that characterize Africa as a linguistic area (Meeussen 1975:3, Heine & Leyew 2007:21). On ideophones in Khoisan, Samarin wrote in the 1970′s:

It is worth adding that although ideophones characterize Bantu languages and their related (and even some unrelated) languages of the North and Northwest (for example, Ewe and Hausa), the non-Bantu languages of the extreme South (that is, Khoisan) do not appear to have them.
(Samarin 1971:160-1, emphasis mine)

Some twenty years later, in an important overview of African ideophones, G. Tucker Childs also noted that ‘the absence of ideophones in Khoisan is another puzzling area’ (Childs 1994:179).

Since then, however, there have been a few reports of ideophones in Khoisan. Childs (2003) revised his 1994 statements, citing Nama and Kxoe (both spoken in Namibia) as Khoisan languages in which ideophones were attested. Indeed, Kilian-Hatz (2001), in an article comparing ideophones from Baka (Niger-Congo, Cameroon) and Kxoe, attributes the claim not so much to a lack of ideophones in Khoisan, but rather to a general lack of data on Khoisan. Still, the previous reports (often based on personal communication with Khoisanists) do cast something of a shadow of doubt over the issue.

Okay, so some Khoisan languages might not have a class of words that perfectly maps onto the category of ideophones in neighbouring Bantu languages. But surely they have their own expressive resources — linguistic structures that are used to convey or evoke sensory perceptions, sensations, and inner feelings. What do these look like? One particulary nice dataset comes from G|ui, a language of the central Kalahari desert sporting an impressive amount of food texture verbs. The data comes from a talk by Hirosi Nakagawa at ALT VII in Paris last year. Rarely does one get linguistic data that is so mouth-watering.

Food texture verbs in G|ui

Food texture verbs in G|ui (from a handout by Hirosi Nakagawa)

Continue reading →