Cover not available
Part of
Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives
Edited by Kimi Akita and Prashant Pardeshi
[Iconicity in Language and Literature 16] 2019
► pp. 167–198

Chapter 7
The sensori-semantic clustering of ideophonic meaning in Pastaza Quichua

| Brigham Young University

I formulate an approach to ideophone semantics which, though based on a corpus from Pastaza Quichua, a South American indigenous language, has potential for analyzing the semantics of ideophone systems more generally. Research on ideophones’ formal properties has preoccupied an increasing number of scholars, while systematic semantic analyses are lagging. Ideophones’ semantics pose challenges because of their intonation and gesture, sound symbolism, and sensory complexity. These qualities require an approach going beyond the traditional mono-sensory classifications, which have dominated ideophones’ semantic descriptions. Using a sensory cluster diagram featuring an implicational logic based on 10 super- and subcategories of sensory experience, this paper analyzes a sample of ideophones drawn from an online corpus featuring 500 archived ideophones.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Unpacking sensory categories
  • 4.Sensori-semantics of Pastaza Quichua ideophones
    • 4.1VISUAL
    • 4.2MOVEMENT
    • 4.3SOUND
  • 5.Low sensory ideophones
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • URL’s for examples
Published online: 6 May 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.16.08nuc
References
Akita, K.
2009 A grammar of sound-symbolic words in Japanese: Theoretical approaches to iconic and indexical properties of mimetics. Ph.D. dissertation, Kobe University.
Akita, K. and Tsujimura, N.
2016 Mimetics. In T. Kageyama and H. Kishimoto (eds), Handbook of Japanese Lexicon and Word Formation, 133–160. Berlin: Gruyter De Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aristotle
1985 The Complete Works, volume 1, J. Barnes (ed.) Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Assaneo, M. F., Nichols, J. I. and Trevisan, M. A.
2011 Anatomy of onomatopoeia. PLoS ONE 6: e28317.: DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barnes, J.
1984 The Complete Works of Aristotle, volume 1 [Bollingen Series LXXI 2, Volume 1]. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bodomo, A.
2006 The structure of ideophones in African and Asian languages: The case of Dagaare and Cantonese. In Selected Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference on African Linguistics: African Languages and Linguistics in Broad Perspectives, 203–213. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Croft, W.
2003 Typology and Universals. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Diffloth, G.
1976 Expressives in Semai. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications 13: Austroasiatic Studies, Part I: 249–264.Google Scholar
Dingemanse, M.
2008 On the history of the term ‘ideophone’. Posted on January 10 at [URL]
2012 Advances in the cross-linguistic study of ideophones. Language and Linguistics Compass 6: 654–672. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 Expressiveness and system integration: on the typology of ideophones with special reference to Siwu. STUF – Language Typology and Universals 70: 363–384. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 3: 4. 1–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Doke, C. M.
1935 Bantu Linguistic Terminology. London: Longmans, Green, and Company.Google Scholar
Firth, J. R.
1964 Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goodman, N.
1968 Languages of Art: An Approach to the Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Keeley, B. L.
2013 What exactly is a sense? In The Oxford Handbook of Synesthesia, J. Simnard and E. M. Hubble (eds), 941–958. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kita, S.
1997 Two-dimensional semantic analysis of Japanese mimetics. Linguistics 35: 379–415. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kunene, D.
2001 Speaking the act: The ideophone as a linguistic rebel. In Voeltz and Kilian-Hatz (eds), 183–192.
Newman, P.
2001 Are ideophones really as weird and extra-systematic as linguists make them out to be? In Voeltz and Kilian-Hatz (eds), 251–258.
Noë, A.
2004 Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Nuckolls, J. B.
1996 Sounds like Life: Sound-Symbolic Grammar, Performance, and Cognition in Pastaza Quechua. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2010 Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman: Ideophony, Dialogue, and Perspective. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
2012 Ideophones in bodily experience in Pastaza Quichua (Ecuador). Proceedings of STLILLA 2011.Google Scholar
Nuckolls, J. B. and Swanson, T.
2014 Earthy concreteness and anti-hypotheticalism in Amazonian Quichua Discourse. Tipiti: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 12: 47–59. [URL]Google Scholar
Nuckolls, J. B., Stanley, J. A., Nielsen, E. and Hopper, R.
2016 The systematic stretching and contracting of ideophonic phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics 82: 95–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Orr, C. and Wrisley, B.
1981 Vocabulario quichua del Oriente, Second edition. Quito, Ecuador: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.Google Scholar
Rhee, S. and Koo, H. J.
2017 Multifaceted gustation: Expressing sensory experience in several languages. Terminology 23: 38–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Schryver, G. -M.
2009 The lexicographic treatment of ideophones in Zulu. Lexicos 19: 34–54.Google Scholar
Streeck, J.
2008 Depicting by gestures. Gesture 8: 285–301. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Talmy, L.
2000 Fictive motion in language and ‘ception’. In Toward a Cognitive Semantics, Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Voeltz, F. K. E. and Kilian-Hatz, C.
(eds) 2001 Ideophones [Typological Studies in Language 44]. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Winter, B.
2019 Synesthetic metaphors are neither synaesthetic nor metaphorical. In Perception Metaphors [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research 19], L. J. Speed, C. O’Meara, L. San Roque and A. Majid (eds), 105–126. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar

URL’s for examples

1.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=chem
2.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=shinki
3.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=win
4.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=kingung
5.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=kingung
6.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=aki
7.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=sa
8.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=tyak
9.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=tyam
10.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=dzing
11.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=rupax
12.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=kukuli
13a, 13b.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=tar
14.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=gyawng
15.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=pis
16.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=chik
17.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=chikwang
18.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=tay
19.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=day
20.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=chun-2
21.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=chun-2
22.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=tas
23.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=tas
24.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=tas
25.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=dzas
26.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=dzas
27.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=tsuping
28.http://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/?ideophone=tsuping
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Akita, Kimi & Keiko Murasugi
2022. Chapter 4. Innovative binomial adjectives in Japanese food descriptions and beyond. In The Language of Food in Japanese [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 25], ► pp. 112 ff. DOI logo
McLean, Bonnie
2021. Revising an implicational hierarchy for the meanings of ideophones, with special reference to Japonic. Linguistic Typology 25:3 ► pp. 507 ff. DOI logo
Nuckolls, Janis B.
2020. “How do you even know what ideophones mean?”. Gesture 19:2-3 ► pp. 161 ff. DOI logo
Thompson, Arthur Lewis, Thomas Van Hoey & Youngah Do
2021. Articulatory features of phonemes pattern to iconic meanings: evidence from cross-linguistic ideophones. Cognitive Linguistics 32:4 ► pp. 563 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 october 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.