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

Thu Mar 21 19:14:16 UTC 2019

This has been an interesting discussion showing how differently ideophones can be construed and raising the question of what might be their best definition as a comparative concept.

It is important not to lose sight of the single mission of categories. “Grammatical categories are justified if grammatical rules… make reference to them; or rather, if such rules can be best state by reference to them.” (translation from Frans Plank 1984: 49) While this is stated for grammatical categories of individual languages, the same logic holds for comparative concepts: they “exist” if they are instrumental in formulating crosslinguistic generalizations. This was in fact Joo Ian’s original question: he was looking to see if ideophones referring brightness show any similarities across languages.

Crosslingustic generalizations justifying categories may of course be of different kinds. They may be EXISTENTIAL, such as that “ideophones defined by such-and-such properties occur in SOME languages”. Or they may be UNIVERSAL, such as “ideophones defined by such-and-such properties occur in ALL languages (sampled)”. Or they may be DISTRIBUTIONAL IMPLICATIONS,  such as “ideophones defined by such-and-such properties occur in ALL those languages (sampled) that ALSO have property X”. Property X may be genetic (belonging to a particular language family), or areal (spoken in a particular area), cultural (spoken in certain cultures) or grammatical (having particular grammatical properties).  That such correlations do exist is shown by some of the examples that cropped up in the discussion. Jeffrey Heath noted that expressivity (perhaps reflected in ideophones) is more prevalent in some cultures (Western European, Arabic, West-Coast Amerind); and Mark Dingemanse stated that open-class-type ideophones occur in Basque, Japanese, Zulu, Siwu, Gbaya and other languages.

(The implications may be in reverse, with ideophones being predicted rather than functioning as predictors.)

The definitions that are useful as correlating in some way with genetic, areal, cultural, or grammatical properties are likely not to be the same: we need to define ideophones alternatively for the purposes of the different kinds of generalizations. This means that, rather than zeroing in on a single best definition of ideophones, we may end up with different definitions of ideophones depending on the purposes they serve.

If all of this is correct, the only way to argue in favor of a crosslinguistically useful definition of ideophones is by demonstrating that it facilitates one or the other of the types of crosslinguistic statements mentioned above. We may hypothesize alternative definitions but the crucial criterion for adopting one or the other is empirical: testing their helpfulness in stating crosslinguistic generalizations.

Best,
Edith Moravcsik

Reference:
Frans Plank 1984. 24 grundsätzliche Bemerkungen zur Wortarten-Frage.
Leuvense Bijdragen 73: 489-520.

From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> On Behalf Of Martin Haspelmath
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2019 4:44 AM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] A "Swadesh List" of Ideophone semantic categories

Yes – Jeffrey is right that we shouldn't use fuzzy concepts (of any sort, whether comparative or language-particular), but precise concepts.

But there is no reason why comparative concepts based on form should be less precise than concepts based on function. For example, I proposed a concept "obligatorily duplicated forms that can be used as adverbials", as a way of reconstructing the intuition that many people have with respect to the term "ideophone". This seems pretty precise to me (though "adverbial" is perhaps too vague, so there is room for improvement).
Mark Dingemanse says that "ideophones are easy to identify, but difficult to define", but I don't see how identification could be independent of definition. What is easy is to think of a sterotypical example, but it is not easy to distinguish ideophones from non-ideophones. In general, I think it's never difficult to define a (clear) concept/term, but it's often difficult to find a clear concept that corresponds reasonably to most people's stereotypes.

Now what about Jeffrey's "onomatopoeias" and "greetings"? Again, it's easy to think of examples, but can we distinguish non-onomatopoeias from onomatopoeias? And non-greetings from greetings? (Or rhyming jingles from non-rhyming-jingles, to take Andrew Pawley's case?)

I'm not sure – and back in 2010, we actually tried to define "greeting" for the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Languages (https://apics-online.info/), because we felt that there were interesting distinctions between the types of greetings that different languages use (good day! how are you? have you eaten? etc.). But we were unable to come up with a clear a concept that corresponds to the "greeting" stereotype, so we gave up.

Martin

On 20.03.19 23:37, Heath Jeffrey wrote:
An alternative superior to fuzzy "comparative concepts" is to start with well-defined functions rather than form classes. Consider the following phenomena, some of which have been lumped together as ideophones:

a) onomatopoieas (thud, thwap, cock-a-doodle-doo);
b) lexicalized forms denoting striking visual and other nonauditory sensory patterns, whether verbs or other stem-types (twinkle, glimmer, zigzag, cross-hatch; stench, putrid)
c) intensifiers for verbs or adjectives, e.g. brand new and stop in one's tracks, along with special (truncated or otherwise modified) forms of adjectives and verbs with similar effect;
d) extreme quantifiers, e.g. zero (zilch), a meager amount ([not even] a plug nickel), and 'all' (the whole enchilada)
e) loaded epithets, slurs
f) diminutives (and other hypocoristics), augmentatives
g) greetings
h) emphatic positive and negative polarity (yes I can, not on your life!, over my dead body)

All of these are "expressive" or "affective" in one way or another, but they are fundamentally distinct semantically and they do not usually coalesce into a single form class. Instead of starting by equating form classes in different languages as "ideophones" and then comparing their lexical inventories, how about starting with a comprehensive set of potentially "expressive" or "emphatic" functions and examining how they are realized in various languages?

For one thing, this would reveal that some languages/cultures are much more oriented toward expressivity overall or in specific contexts than others. For example, there are remarkable cross-linguistic differences in the extent to which diminutives and other hypocoristics are developed.  Western European languages (English, Dutch, Basque), some Arabic varieties, and west coast Amerindian languages are high on the list, Australian Aboriginal languages dead last. Likewise with greetings and other forms of conversation-starting "phatic communion" which are highly variable (West Africans are champions, Arabs pretty good, western Europeans mediocre, Australian Aboriginals again dead last). These are anthropologically profound issues that are rarely addressed by typologists.
________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Dingemanse, Mark <Mark.Dingemanse at mpi.nl><mailto:Mark.Dingemanse at mpi.nl>
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2019 10:49 AM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] Re: A "Swadesh List" of Ideophone semantic categories

 (Hoping this reply to the digest ends up at the right thread.)

1.

Regarding Ian Joo's initial query about ideophone semantic categories, you might want to have a look at Samarin's work on West-African ideophone systems. They look a lot like the broad categories Guillaume posted before, and are likely to be useful beyond African languages. One doubt one may have about the ones published so far is that they are fairly top down and haphazard; one just has to compare Samarin's categories to those from his French contemporary Alexandre to see differences that say more about their respective metalanguages (English and French) than about the ideophone systems they're meant to capture. Perhaps the Concepticon can provide a way out here.

2.
Regarding the question of a cross-linguistic definition of ideophones, I agree with Jeff and Martin that ideophones seem special in that they are "easy to identify, but difficult to define" (as I wrote in my 2012 review). Nonetheless, the issues are not so different from those we've seen with many other major word classes, including fuzzy boundaries, diachronic diversions, and languages that seem to lack an instantiation of the category. A recurring temptation in this space is to take definitions intended for cross-linguistic comparison (comparative concepts) and require of them the precision offered by language-specific definitions (descriptive categories). The latter are always going to offer more precision, but they pay for this in lack of generalizability.

Hindi ideophones as described by Kellersman are clearly different from mots idéophonique in Bambara as defined by Dumestre, Japanese mimetics as defined by Akita, or Semelai expressives as defined by Kruspe. One reason all of these are different is that they are (quite sensibly) grammatical definitions rooted in language-specific facts. We need such language-specific grammatical definitions to do justice to the attested linguistic diversity.

But why stop there? For the comparative linguist a natural next question is to what extent these categories might be linkable to a common comparative concept that may help explain recurrent similarities across languages. Paraphrasing Dryer (1998), "when we do find such similarities, it is at least convenient to employ labels that have been employed for similar word classes". The term 'ideophone', understood as a typological notion, is just such a label.

One demonstration of the utility of this label is that it has helped to unify findings from disparate languages. For instance, we've pointed to remarkable convergence in morphosyntactic behaviour for ideophone-like categories in 10 disparate languages in our 2017 Journal of Linguistics paper, a finding that is directly related to their proposed definition as words depictive of sensory imagery, and that has since been replicated in Basque, Luhya, Amazonian Kichwa, and Wao Terero.

That said, I think the definition introduced in my 2012 paper can be improved upon. One formal feature I've recently proposed to add is that ideophones tend to be an open lexical class. This captures the ideophone systems of Basque, Japanese, Zulu, Siwu, Gbaya, etc, while excluding adjacent or orthogonal phenomena like phonaesthemes, depicting constructions in signed languages, and (in some languages) onomatopoeia. According to this revised comparative definition, a canonical ideophone is a member of an open lexical class of marked words that depict sensory imagery. It can no doubt be further sharpened and improved, but it captures 5 important dimensions of ideophone-like categories across languages and so allows for a more objective systematic comparative treatment of ideophones and adjacent phenomena than would be allowed by sticking only to language-specific descriptive categories.

I write about these matters in a forthcoming chapter on "'Ideophone' as a comparative concept" (happy to share the uncorrected proofs if you send me an email).

Best,

Mark Dingemanse

Refs cited:

Alexandre, Pierre. 1966. Préliminaire à une présentation des idéophones Bulu. In J. Lukas (ed.), Neue Afrikanische Studien, Hamburger Beiträge zur Afrika-Kunde, 9–28. Hamburg: Deutsches Institut für Afrika-Forschung.

Dingemanse, Mark & Kimi Akita. 2017. An inverse relation between expressiveness and grammatical integration: on the morphosyntactic typology of ideophones, with special reference to Japanese. Journal of Linguistics 53(3). 501–532. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S002222671600030X

Dingemanse, Mark. 2019. ‘Ideophone’ as a comparative concept. In Kimi Akita & Prashant Pardeshi (eds.), Ideophones, Mimetics, Expressives, 13–34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Dryer, Matthew S. 1997. Are grammatical relations universal? In Joan Bybee, John Haiman, & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Essays on Language Function and Language Type, 115–143. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Samarin, William J. 1965. Perspective on African ideophones. African Studies 24(2). 117–121.

Samarin, William J. 1967. Determining the meaning of ideophones. Journal of West African Languages 4(2). 35–41.

________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2019 7:11 PM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Lingtyp Digest, Vol 54, Issue 10

Today's Topics:

   1. Re: A "Swadesh List" of Ideophone semantic categories
      (Martin Haspelmath)
   2. R:  A "Swadesh List" of Ideophone semantic categories
      (Paolo Ramat)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2019 18:55:09 +0100
From: Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de><mailto:haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>
To: <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] A "Swadesh List" of Ideophone semantic
        categories
Message-ID: <5C912CFD.405 at shh.mpg.de><mailto:5C912CFD.405 at shh.mpg.de>
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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><mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf
> of Johann-Mattis List <mattis.list at lingulist.de><mailto:mattis.list at lingulist.de>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, March 19, 2019 5:47 AM
> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fconcepticon.clld.org&data=02%7C01%7C%7C14ca4b75a75448e1e38d08d6ad436cf1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636886902479438681&sdata=ERgpFlexm3bLBjSQ0SPvncLN3QpdJrrgeFZbUKhY2Ak%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><mailto: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<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> > *Cc :* caroljuan27 at gmail.com<mailto:caroljuan27 at gmail.com>; mariaflax at gmail.com<mailto: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
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Lingtyp mailing list
> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> >
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--
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de<mailto: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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------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2019 19:10:35 +0100
From: "Paolo Ramat" <paoram at unipv.it><mailto:paoram at unipv.it>
To: "'Martin Haspelmath'" <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de><mailto:haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>,
        <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] R:  A "Swadesh List" of Ideophone semantic
        categories
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As a contribution to the ideophones discussion I’m attaching a very interesting article by the ethnolinguist Maurizio Gnerre which will appear in the next issue of  the “Archivio Glottologico Italiano” (a monographic issue dedicated to ‘deixis’)

Paolo

Da: Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] Per conto di Martin Haspelmath
Inviato: martedì 19 marzo 2019 18:55
A: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Lingtyp] A "Swadesh List" of Ideophone semantic categories

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  <mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Johann-Mattis List  <mailto:mattis.list at lingulist.de> <mattis.list at lingulist.de><mailto:mattis.list at lingulist.de>
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2019 5:47 AM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <mailto: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 <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<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fconcepticon.clld.org&data=02%7C01%7C%7C14ca4b75a75448e1e38d08d6ad436cf1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636886902479518733&sdata=9hjfSuWkBLDqVPtDdZ6Z4uPBupUuUID6EdYWAuGXKF0%3D&reserved=0>> &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  <mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto: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<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Cc :* caroljuan27 at gmail.com<mailto:caroljuan27 at gmail.com> <mailto:caroljuan27 at gmail.com> ; mariaflax at gmail.com<mailto:mariaflax at gmail.com> <mailto: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<mailto:haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> <mailto: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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--

Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de<mailto: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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