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Part of
Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives
Edited by Kimi Akita and Prashant Pardeshi
[Iconicity in Language and Literature 16] 2019
► pp. 137–166

Chapter 6
Towards a semantic typological classification of motion ideophones

The motion semantic grid

| Universidad de Zaragoza
Motion ideophones are ubiquitous across languages. They expressively enact the way a motion event takes place. The main goal of this chapter is to offer a working proposal to classify motion ideophones from a semantic typological perspective. After a description of motion ideophones, the semantic grid for motion ideophones is presented. This consists of 7 first-level components plus 26 second-level and 121 third-level sub-components. The second part comprises two studies: a first-level analysis of 453 Basque motion ideophones and a fine-grained subcomponent analysis on a selection of 186 motion ideophones from 16 genetically and geographically different languages. The last section discusses the usefulness and applicability of this type of semantic typological classifications.
Article outline
  • 1.Motion ideophones across languages
  • 2.Motion semantic grid
  • 3.Motion semantic grid into practice
    • 3.1First-level semantic components in Basque ideophones
    • 3.2All-level semantic components for ideophones across languages
  • 4.Conclusions: Motion ideophones from a semantic typological perspective
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 6 May 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.16.07iba
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