Ideophone creation in a corpus of everyday speech

Revised and published as:

  • Dingemanse, M. (2014). Making new ideophones in Siwu: Creative depiction in conversation. Pragmatics and Society, 5(3), 384–405. doi:10.1075/ps.5.3.04din

This chapter sheds new light on an old issue in ideophone studies, namely the question of ideophone creation. Does it happen, and if yes, how common is it really, and what can it tell us about creativity in language?

Extract 13.1: Belelele [line 14-18]
Extract 13.2: Walayayayaya
Extract 13.3: Kpaw [lines 1-13]
Extract 13.4: Kpaw, continued (Ták tòw… GBIIIM) [line 14-20]

See also errata.