Cover not available
Part of
Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives
Edited by Kimi Akita and Prashant Pardeshi
[Iconicity in Language and Literature 16] 2019
► pp. 303–322

Chapter 12
Ideophones as a measure of multilingualism

 | Portland State University
The purpose of the pilot research described here was twofold. The first was to develop a measure for multilingualism, how to characterize what has come to be known in the literature as a linguistic repertoire in a rapid and economical manner. A linguistic repertoire is not a language but the resources and practices of a multilingual in a multilingual community. How this repertoire can be descriptively characterized is problematic. A first pass, as illustrated here, used knowledge of ideophones as the measure of language mastery just because ideophones are so language-specific and deeply embedded in the socio-cultural patterns of the language. The study was limited to one of the three vital languages in the research area but will eventually be extended to the others. The second purpose was to explore the interaction of multilingualism with the mastery of ideophones.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Motivation for the study
    • 1.2Good’s paradox, a brief aside
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Multilingualism in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea
    • 2.2Why ideophones?
    • 2.3African areality and ideophones
    • 2.4The research site: Why Shenge and why Mende?
    • 2.5Research questions
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1The stimuli
    • 3.2Subjects
    • 3.3The administration
    • 3.4Analysis
  • 4.Findings and discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 6 May 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.16.13tuc
References (61)
References
Ahlner, F. and Zlatev, J. 2010. Cross-modal iconicity: A cognitive semiotic approach to sound symbolism. Sign Systems Studies 38: 298–348. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aronin, L. and Singleton, D. 2012. Multilingualism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bakker, P. and Muysken, P. 1995. Mixed languages and language intertwining. In Pidgins and Creoles: An Introduction, J. Arends, P. Muysken and N. S. H. Smith (eds), 41–52. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Baugh, J. 2015. Discursive practices, linguistic repertoire, and racial identities. In The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, N. Bonvillain (ed.), 206–219. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bolinger, D. L. 1965. Forms of English. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, G. E. 1993. Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society, and Trade in Western Africa, 1000–1630. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Byrne, T. E. 1993. A description of Mende ideophones. B.A. Ed. thesis, Njala, Sierra Leone: Njala University.Google Scholar
Cahill, M. C. 2015. Labial-velars: A questionable diagnostic for a linguistic area. Paper presented at the WOCAL 8, Kyoto, Japan.Google Scholar
Calvet, L. -J. 1974. Linguistique et colonialisme: Petite traité de glottophagie. Paris: Payot.Google Scholar
Childs, G. T. 1988. The phonology of Kisi ideophones. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 10: 165–190.Google Scholar
1994a. African ideophones. In Sound Symbolism, L. Hinton, J. Nichols and J. J. Ohala (eds), 247–279. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1994b. Expressiveness in contact situations: The fate of African ideophones. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 9: 257–282. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1996. Where have all the ideophones gone? The death of a word category in Zulu. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 15: 81–103.Google Scholar
1997. The status of Isicamtho, an Nguni-based urban variety of Soweto. In Pidgins and Creoles: Structure and Status, A. K. Spears and D. Winford (eds), 341–370. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1998. Ideophone variation is tied to local identity. In The Sociolinguistics of Language and Society: Selected Papers from SS IX, M. K. Verma (ed.), 36–46. Thousand Oaks, CA, London, and New Delhi: Sage Publishers.Google Scholar
1999. A first pass at Guinea French. Paper presented at the Ninth International Colloquium on Creole Studies (9o Colloque International des Études Créoles), Aix-en-Provence.Google Scholar
2001. Research on ideophones, whither hence? The need for a social theory of ideophones. In Ideophones, F. K. E. Voeltz and C. Kilian-Hatz, 63–73. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2002a. Borrowings into Kisi as evidence of Mande expansionism and influence. Journal of West African Languages 29: 81–120.Google Scholar
2002b. Further evidence for a Guinea Pidgin French. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (SPCL),San Francisco, January 4–5.Google Scholar
2010. The Mande and Atlantic Groups of Niger-Congo: Prolonged contact with asymmetrical linguistic consequences. In Documenting Atlantic-Mande Convergence and Diversity (A special issue of the Journal Language Contact, THEMA 3 (2010)), F. Lüpke and M. Raymond (eds), 15–46. Leiden, Boston, and Köln: Brill.Google Scholar
2012. How to pretend you speak a dying language when you don’t really know how to speak it: Methodological worries in documenting dying languages. In Proceedings of the 6th World Congress of African Linguistics (WOCAL 6), Cologne, 17-21 August 2009, M. Brenzinger and A. -M. Fehn (eds), 75–90. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.Google Scholar
2015. Sound symbolism. In The Oxford Handbook of the Word, J. R. Taylor (ed.), 284–302. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2017. What’s really areal? In WOCAL 8 (World Conference on African Linguistics), S. Kaji, T. Kamiya and Y. Kimoto (eds), 289–312. Tokyo.Google Scholar
2018. Forty-plus years before the mast: My experiences as a field linguist. In Word Hunters: Field Linguists on Fieldwork, H. Sarvasy and D. Forker (eds), 61–78. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
To appear. Genetically motivated clusters within Atlantic. In The Oxford Guide to the Atlantic Languages of West Africa, F. Lüpke (ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Connell, B. 2009. Language diversity and language choice: A view from a Cameroon market. Anthropological Linguistics 51: 130–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cook, V. J. 2009. Multilingual Universal Grammar as the norm. In Third Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar, I. Leung (ed.), 55–70. Bristol, Buffalo, and Toronto: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cook, V. J. and Wei, L. (eds). 2015. The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Multi-Competence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cukor-Avila, P. and Bailey, G. 1995. An approach to sociolinguistic fieldwork: A site study of rural AAVE in a Texas community. English World-Wide 16: 159–183. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dalby, D. 1970. Reflections on the classification of African languages with special reference to the work of Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle and Malcolm Guthrie. African Language Studies 11: 1–14.Google Scholar
Dimmendaal, G. J. 2011. Historical Linguistics and the Comparative Study of African Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015. Different cultures, different attitudes: but how different is "the African situation" really? In Language Revitalization: An African Perspective, J. Essegbey, B. Henderson and F. McLaughlin, 37–58. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Dingemanse, M. 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: 363–385. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dobrin, L. M. 2014. Language shift in an 'importing culture': The cultural logic of the Arapesh roads. In Endangered Languages: Beliefs and Ideologies in Language Documentation and Revitalisation, P. K. Austin and J. Sallabank (eds), 125–147. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press / British Academy. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fasold, R. W. 1984. The Sociolinguistics of Society. Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Güldemann, T. 2008. The Macro-Sudan Belt: Towards identifying a linguistic area in northern sub-Saharan Africa. In A Linguistic Geography of Africa, B. Heine and D. Nurse (eds), 151–185. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, J. J. 1964. Linguistic and social interaction in two communities. American Anthropologist 66: 137–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, J. J. and Wilson, R. 1971. Convergence and creolization: A case from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border in India. In Pidginization and Creolization of Languages: Proceedings of a Conference held at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, April 1968, D. Hymes (ed.), 151–167. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hamilton, J. 2016. A Sniff Test for Alzheimer's Checks for the Ability to Identify Odors. Washington, DC: National Public Radio.Google Scholar
Heine, B. and Leyew, Z. 2008. Is Africa a linguistic area? In A Linguistic Geography of Africa, B. Heine and D. Nurse (eds), 15–35. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heine, B. and Nurse, D. (eds). 2008. A Linguistic Geography of Africa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Huttar, G. L. 1986. Kikongo, Saramaccan, and Ndjuka. In Language in Global Perspective: Papers in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1935-1985, B. F. Elson (ed.), 563–586. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Hymes, D. 1966. Two types of linguistic relativity. In Sociolinguistics, W. Bright (ed.), 114–158. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
1972. On communicative competence. In Sociolinguistics: Selected readings, J. B. Pride and J. Holmes, 269–293. Hammondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Lanham, L. W. 1960. The comparative phonology of Nguni. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand.Google Scholar
Lüpke, F. 2008. “We Baïnouk speak the language of everybody around us”: A sociolinguistique profile of the Bainouk Gunyaamolo community. Paper presented at the Documenting convergence and diversity – Mande and Atlantic languages in contact, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.Google Scholar
Lüpke, F. and Storch, A. 2013. Repertoires and Choices in African Languages. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lüpke, F. 2016. Uncovering small-scale multilingualism. Critical Multilingualism Studies 4: 35–74.Google Scholar
Mathumba, D. I. 1991. The influence of Pretoria Sotho and Urban Tsonga on Standard Tsonga. Mankweng, Limpopo, South Africa: STANON programme of the HSRC, University of the North.
Mous, M. 2003. The Making of a Mixed Language: The Case of Ma'a/Mbugu. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nichols, J. 1971. Diminutive sound symbolism in western North America. Language 47: 826–848. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rindstedt, C. and Aronsson, K. 2002. Growing up monolongual in a bilngual community: the Quichua revitalization paradox. Language in Society 31: 721–742. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Samarin, W. J. 1991. Intersubjective and intradialectal variation in Gbeya ideophones. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 1: 52–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Singler, J. V. 1997. The configuration of Liberia's Englishes. World Englishes 16, Special issue: Pidgin-to-English Continua: 205–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thomason, S. G. and Kaufman, T. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, H. -R. and Koroma, M. T. 2014. Krio, a Language of Sierra Leone, Dictionary and Phrase Book. New York: Hippocrene Books.Google Scholar
Webster, D. 1991. Abafazi bathonga bafihlakala!: Ethnicity and gender in a KwaZulu border community. In Tradition and Transition in Southern Africa, A. D. Spiegel and P. A. McAllister (eds), 244–271. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, W. A. A. 1989. Atlantic. In The Niger-Congo Languages, J. Bendor-Samuel (ed.), 81–104. Lanham, MD and London: University Press of America, Inc.Google Scholar
Winford, D. 2003. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Oxford and New York: Blackwell.Google Scholar