Ideophones’ challenges for typological linguistics

The case of Pastaza Quichua

Janis B. Nuckolls | Brigham Young University

Typological studies of motion verbs have struggled to conceptualize a framework that would adequately account for languages which make use of ideophoness for expressing manner of motion. This paper examines ideophones in the Pastaza Quichua dialect of Amazonian Ecuador, with a special focus on the structural patterns observable in two categories of Quichua verbs of motion: verbs of motion by limited translocation and verbs of motion by nonlimited translocation. These two types of verbs and their ideophones manifest 5 major patterns of verb/ideophone interaction, which may be schematized with a gradient scale of possibilities. On the one hand, verbs and their ideophones may come together and coalesce into a unity of meaning, a meaning that is, in fact, lexicalized in one verb form by other languages. On the other hand, verbs and their ideophones may be more inclined toward a ‘separatist semantics’, in which each entity expresses a conceptually distinctive action, event, or process. These patterns problematize several assumptions made in typological studies.

Keywords: ideophones, semantics, motion verbs, Quechua, typology

Published online: 14 November 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.5.3.03nuc

Cited by

Cited by other publications

Akita, Kimi

2020. In Operationalizing Iconicity [Iconicity in Language and Literature, 17], ► pp. 4 ff.

Babel, Anna M.

2016. Affective motivations for borrowing: Performing local identity through loan phonology. Language & Communication 49 ► pp. 70 ff.

Babel, Anna M.

2017. Aspirates and ejectives in Quechua-influenced Spanish. Spanish in Context 14:2 ► pp. 159 ff.

Dingemanse, Mark

2018. Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3:1

Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide

2017. In Motion and Space across Languages [Human Cognitive Processing, 59], ► pp. 13 ff.

Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide

2019. In Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives [Iconicity in Language and Literature, 16], ► pp. 137 ff.

Nuckolls, Janis B.

2020. In The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, ► pp. 1 ff.

Nuckolls, Janis B., Tod D. Swanson, Diana Shelton, Alexander Rice & Sarah Hatton

2017. Lexicography in-your-face: The active semantics of Pastaza Quichua ideophones. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 62:2 ► pp. 154 ff.

Webster, Anthony K.

2017. “So it's got three meanings dil dil:” Seductive ideophony and the sounds of Navajo poetry. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 62:2 ► pp. 173 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 january 2021. 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.

References

Butt, Miriam

2003 “The Light Verb Jungle.” In Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 9, ed. by G. Aygen, C. Bowern, and C. Quinn. Papers from the GSAS/Dudley House Workshop on Light Verbs, 1–49.

Dingemanse, Mark

2012 “Advances in the Cross-linguistic Study of Ideophones.” Language and Linguistics Compass 6: 654–672.

Nuckolls, Janis B.

1996 Sounds Like Life: Sound-symbolic Grammar, Performance, and Cognition in Pastaza Quechua. New York: Oxford University Press.

2010 Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman: Ideophony, Dialogue and Perspective. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.

2011 “Ideophones in Bodily Experience in Pastaza Quechua.” Proceedings of STLILLA, Symposium on Teaching and Learning Indigenous Languages of Latin America, 1–19.

Nuckolls, Janis, Roseanna Hopper, Elizabeth Nielsen, and Joseph Stanley

ms). The Systematic Stretching and Adjusting of Ideophonic Phonology in Pastaza Quichua.

Slobin, Dan

2006 “What Makes Manner of Motion Salient?” In Space in Languages: Linguistic Systems and Cognitive Categories. Typological Studies in Language, vol. 66, ed. by  M. Hickman, and S. Robert, 59–81. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Talmy, Leonard

2007 “Lexical Typologies” In Language Typology and Syntactic Description, ed. by Timothy Shopen, vol. 3: Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon, 66–168. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.