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Sounding out ideas on language, interaction, and iconicity
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Category: Early sources

A serendipitous wormhole into the history of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EMCA)

October 6, 2022 mark Leave a comment

A serendipitous wormhole into #EMCA history. I picked up Sudnow’s piano course online and diligently work through the lessons. Guess…

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Posted in: Academia, Early sources, Linguistics, Threads

The Gruner Map: a 1913 map of the Togo Plateau in present-day Ghana

October 14, 2021 mark 2 Comments

Few historical maps of Ghana’s Volta and Oti regions have been invested with so much political and sociohistorical meaning as…

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Posted in: Early sources

New paper: Redrawing the margins of language

January 14, 2018 mark 2 Comments

Just out in Glossa, the premier open access journal of general linguistics: Dingemanse, Mark. 2018. “Redrawing the Margins of Language:…

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Posted in: African languages, Early sources, Iconicity, Ideophones, Linguistics

Firth on the analysis of conversation (1935): sequence and social accountability

August 9, 2017 mark 2 Comments

Here are some insights from J.R. Firth in 1935 that offer an interesting early outlook on language use in social…

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Posted in: Academia, Early sources, Linguistics

Ideophones in Bakairi, Brasil, 1894

August 18, 2013 mark Leave a comment

Last year Sabine Reiter defended an interesting PhD thesis on ideophones in Awetí, a Tupian language spoken in the Upper…

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Posted in: Early sources, Ideophones

Evolving words — now on DLC

May 28, 2013 mark Leave a comment

“A struggle for life is constantly going on among quotations in academic writings. The better, the shorter, the easier forms…

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Posted in: Early sources, Linguistics

Preview: a 1913 map of the Togo Hills

April 24, 2013 mark 1 Comment

With the help of the Radboud University and MPI Nijmegen librarians I’ve been tracking down an obscure but historically important…

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Posted in: Early sources, Fieldwork, Siwu

Robertson’s Report on the geology of Western Togoland (1921)

December 17, 2011 mark 6 Comments

One of the earliest English sources on the geology of what is today the Volta Region in eastern Ghana is…

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Posted in: Early sources

A visit to Akpafu by Nicolas Clerk, 1889

December 12, 2011 mark 2 Comments

Travel journals provide some of the first written sources on Akpafu. I have previously posted an excerpt from a 1887…

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Posted in: Early sources, Kawu, Mission

H.B.K. Ogbete, A history of the Akpafus

March 18, 2011 mark 21 Comments

One of the most interesting sources on the history and customs of the Mawu people of eastern Ghana (also known…

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Posted in: Anthropology, Early sources, Siwu

A visit to Akpafu by David Asante, 1887

January 21, 2011 mark 31 Comments

This is the first ever published account of a visit to Akpafu. It was written down by David Asante, a…

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Posted in: Early sources, Siwu

Aduerbia sonus: Ideophones in two 17th century grammars of Japanese

April 13, 2010 mark 2 Comments

One of my projects here at The Ideophone has been to track down early sources on ideophonic phenomena. For example,…

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Posted in: Early sources, Ideophones, Japanese

Early sources on African ideophones, part IV: S.W. Koelle on Kanuri, 1854

September 18, 2009 mark 2 Comments

It is high time for a continuation of our series honouring the ancestors of ideophone studies. Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle is…

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Posted in: African languages, Early sources, Ideophones, Linguistics

Bingo! Refinding the oldest specimen of Siwu

August 10, 2009 mark 5 Comments

The oldest written fragments of Siwu found so far come from Rudolph Plehn (1898). Besides some words and phrases (edited…

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Posted in: Anthropology, Early sources, Siwu Filed under: highlights

Scandalised missionaries and quite a new class of priests: some unforeseen effects of early missionary efforts in the Gold Coast

December 6, 2008 mark 1 Comment

In pursuit of early written sources about Kawu I came across a useful summary of explorations in the Volta Basin…

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Posted in: Early sources, Fun, Mission

Early sources on African ideophones, part III: ‘Onomatopoeia as a formative principle’, 1886

September 29, 2008 mark 3 Comments

The steady influx of vocabularies of ‘exotic’ languages during the nineteenth century caused a veritable flowering of comparative philology in…

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Posted in: African languages, Early sources, Ideophones, Sound symbolism

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

August 15, 2008 mark 5 Comments

Part two of our series on early sources (part one is here) is dedicated to Reverend O. E. Vidal, M.A.…

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Posted in: African languages, Early sources, Ideophones

Kawu in January 1887

July 2, 2008 mark 1 Comment

The earliest description of Kawu (Akpafu) I have found so far is quite special in that it was written by…

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Posted in: Early sources, Kawu, Mission

The mysteries of Christian doctrine, or, How an African language was mistaken for an Amazonian one

April 28, 2008 mark 4 Comments

In an excellent post over at Greater Blogazonia, Lev Michael unravels a spectacular error which led several eminent specialists of…

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Posted in: African languages, Early sources, Mission

Pfisterer on Akpafu, 1904 (part II)

January 30, 2008 mark 1 Comment

Today’s posting brings you the second part of Pfisterer’s 1904 article (see the previous posting for details on the context…

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Posted in: Anthropology, Early sources, Mission, Siwu

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Latest 10 posts

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