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.1 This is one of the ways in which ideophones ‘pepper’ everyday speech in Siwu.
References
- Clark, Herbert H, and Richard J Gerrig. 1990. Quotations as Demonstrations. Language 66, no. 4:764-805.
- Walton, Kendall L. 1973. Pictures and Make-Believe. The Philosophical Review 82, no. 3:283-319.
- On the differences between description and depiction, see Clark & Gerrig 1990 and also Walton 1973. With thanks to Herbert Clark for pointing me to this paper. [↩]