[Lingtyp] A "Swadesh List" of Ideophone semantic categories

Tue Mar 19 17:55:09 UTC 2019

Jeffrey Heath makes a very important point here. It's easy to think of a 
typical exemplar of an ideophone, and this is so different from other 
types of words that the special term "ideophone" seems useful. But 
exemplar-based concepts give us subjective stereotypes, not comparative 
concepts that can be used for objective cross-linguistic comparison.

There are other terms of this kind in linguistics ("word", "clitic", 
"agglutination", "agreement") – they seem useful because everyone can 
think of a salient exemplar, but they are undefined, so we cannot really 
use them for quantitative cross-linguistic comparison.

(The only definition of "ideophone" that I could think of is 
"obligatorily duplicated forms that can be used as adverbials" – this 
would include the most typical cases, and would exclude cases like Greek 
sighá-sighá 'slowly', because sighá on its own is possible as well, if I 
remember correctly. The definition would exclude many of the cases 
included by Dingemanse, of course.)

Martin

On 19.03.19 12:07, Heath Jeffrey wrote:
> How do you define "ideophone"? Are English verbs twinkle and sputter 
> ideophones? Are onomatopoeias ideophones? What about adjectival 
> intensifiers like brand in brand new?
>
> There is no cross-linguistically applicable grammatical definition of 
> this concept, i.e. with necessary and sufficient morphosyntactic 
> properties. Dingemanse's universal definition of ideophones is, for 
> good reason, limited to the convergence of phonological and semantic 
> markedness. Both of these are intrinsically vague and subjective. His 
> definition makes no mention of morphosyntactic properties. In specific 
> languages, morphosyntactically valid word-class categories often 
> include some (intuitively) ideophone-like stems along with some 
> (intuitively) non-ideophone-like stems, and exclude other 
> (intuitively) ideophone-like stems. For example, onomatopoeias 
> (sometimes claimed to be the universal bedrock of ideophones) often 
> constitute a morphosyntactic class of their own, distinct from the 
> class containing many (intuitively) ideophone-like stems. So there is 
> no universal core for ideophone, comparable to that often claimed for 
> adjective or numeral.
>
> Any crosslinguistic survey of ideophone semantics or phonology, even 
> if limited to West Africa, will have to wrestle with the vagueness of 
> the concept.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf 
> of Johann-Mattis List <mattis.list at lingulist.de>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, March 19, 2019 5:47 AM
> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] A "Swadesh List" of Ideophone semantic 
> categories
> I'd recommend all of you to see if the concepts you want to use there
> appear (already) in Concepticon at 
> https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fconcepticon.clld.org&data=02%7C01%7C%7C2da20e444a544c06124008d6ac4feb60%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636885856584198686&sdata=q158Ogy4Tt9jd78oRc8wYeFa9kPTNDlHsbG7Au9jwP0%3D&reserved=0. 
> If not,
> and you publish your list, we'll gladly add them, if they are not too
> idiosyncratic, but I'd expect they won't if you go for cross-linguistic
> studies as a goal.
>
> Best,
>
> Mattis
>
> On 19/03/2019 10.32, Françoise Rose wrote:
> > Hi Ian,
> >
> > Here is a list of general actions or states that are expressed (often
> > more specifically) by Teko ideophones and that do not seem to fit in
> > your current list.
> >
> >
> >
> > Blowing
> >
> > Be dark
> >
> > Closed eyes / Open eyes
> >
> > Grimace
> >
> > Snoaring
> >
> > Tearing
> >
> > Entering /exiting
> >
> > Winking
> >
> > Shooting
> >
> > Falling
> >
> > Slip
> >
> > Jumping
> >
> > Go up/down
> >
> > Push
> >
> > Bubbles
> >
> >
> >
> > You can read about Teko ideophones in my grammar. P. 400-409
> >
> > Ros  Rose, Françoise. /Grammaire de l’émérillon Teko, Une Langue
> > Tupi-Guarani de Guyane Française/. Langues et Sociétés d’Amérique
> > Traditionnelle 10. Louvain: Peeters, 2011.
> >
> >
> >
> > Very best,
> >
> > Françoise
> >
> >
> >
> > *De :* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> *De la part
> > de* Joo Ian
> > *Envoyé :* mardi 19 mars 2019 09:20
> > *À :* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> > *Cc :* caroljuan27 at gmail.com; mariaflax at gmail.com
> > *Objet :* [Lingtyp] A "Swadesh List" of Ideophone semantic categories
> >
> >
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> >
> >
> > I am currently trying to make a list of semantic categories of
> > ideophones, in order to do a cross-linguistic comparison (for example,
> > do ideophones whose meanings are related to brightness show similarity
> > across different languages?)
> >
> >
> >
> > Here’s my list so far, created out of my intuition and previous 
> literature.
> >
> > I wonder if you have any meanings that you would like to add to or
> > remove from the list.
> >
> > The goal is to make a list of ideophone meanings so that most languages
> > that have a sizeable ideophone inventory would have at least several
> > ideophones that belong to each category.
> >
> >
> >
> > *Semantic Categories*
> >
> > Air
> >
> > Anxiety
> >
> > Bright
> >
> > Clean
> >
> > Clear-cut/Vivid
> >
> > Crying
> >
> > Dirty/Messy
> >
> > Dry
> >
> > Eating/Drinking
> >
> > Fast
> >
> > Flow
> >
> > Friction
> >
> > Hitting/Beating
> >
> > Hungry/Thirsty
> >
> > Laughter
> >
> > Looking
> >
> > Plenty
> >
> > Ringing
> >
> > Ripping/Cutting
> >
> > Romantic
> >
> > Rotation
> >
> > Rough
> >
> > Rupture
> >
> > Scattering
> >
> > Secretly
> >
> > Shaking/Vibration
> >
> > Slow/Lazy
> >
> > Soft
> >
> > Solid
> >
> > Speaking
> >
> > Stop
> >
> > Walking/Running
> >
> > Wet
> >
> >
> >
> > I would appreciate any comments or advices.
> >
> >
> >
> > From Seoul,
> >
> > Ian
> >
> >
> >
> >
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-- 
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10	
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig

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