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Part of
Historical Linguistics 2022: Selected papers from the 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Oxford, 1–5 August 2022
Edited by Holly Kennard, Emily Lindsay-Smith, Aditi Lahiri and Martin Maiden
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 369] 2025
► pp. 62–78

Diachronic shifts among sound ideophones

| Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
| University of Ibadan
We assess the depictive and descriptive character of sound ideophones and their historical evolution in Emai of West Africa. Their initial depictive nature remains evident in phonological similarity to extant verbs with related meanings and retention of a perfective aspect mark. In their descriptive mode ideophones appear as synchronic adverbs that impact tonal marking within a clause. To account for their evolution from expressive acategorial forms to verbs, then to adverbs we rely on two constructions of cause-effect, one being resultative and the other aspectual extent. Via analogy each interacts with clausal expression of ideophonic forms leading to their recategorization and morphosyntactic integration into the contemporary grammatical system, particularly as it applies to information flow in traditional narrative discourse.
Keywords: ideophones of sound, verbs, cause-effect, resultative, aspectual extent
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Lexical character of ideophonic forms
  • 3.Morphosyntactic character of ideophones
  • 4.Cause-effect and analogy in ideophone development
  • 5.Emai ideophones as adverb subclass
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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References (21)
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