Cover not available
Article published In:
The Why and How of Total Reduplication: Current Issues and New Perspectives
Edited by Daniela Rossi
[Studies in Language 39:4] 2015
► pp. 946–970

Ideophones and reduplication

Depiction, description, and the interpretation of repeated talk in discourse

| Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen

Repetition is one of the most basic operations on talk, often discussed for its iconic meanings. Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory imagery, often identified by their reduplicated forms. Yet not all reduplication is iconic, and not all ideophones are reduplicated. This paper discusses the semantics and pragmatics of repeated talk with special reference to ideophones. To understand these phenomena, it is useful to distinguish two modes of representation in language — description and depiction — along with cues like prosodic foregrounding that help steer listener’s interpretations from one to the other. Reduplication can partake in both modes, which is why it is common in ideophones and other areas of grammar. Using evidence from a range of languages, this paper shows how the study of ideophones sheds light on the interpretation of repeated talk, and argues that both description and depiction are fundamental to understanding how language works.

Keywords: depiction, pragmatics, ideophones, iconicity, semantics, reduplication, repetition
Published online: 3 March 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.39.4.05din
References
Akita, Kimi
2009 A Grammar of Sound-Symbolic Words in Japanese: Theoretical Approaches to Iconic and Lexical Properties of Japanese Mimetics. Kobe: Kobe University dissertation. [URL].Google Scholar
Ameka, Felix K
2001 Ideophones and the Nature of the Adjective Word Class in Ewe. In F.K. Erhard Voeltz & Christa Kilian-Hatz (eds.), Ideophones, 25–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bateson, Gregory
1955 A theory of play and fantasy. Psychiatric Research Reports 2(39). 39–51.Google Scholar
Beck, David
2008 Ideophones, adverbs, and predicate qualification in Upper Necaxa Totonac. International Journal of American Linguistics 74(1). 1–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bergman, Brita & Östen Dahl
1994 Ideophones in Sign Language? The place of reduplication in the tense-aspect system of Swedish Sign Language. In Carl Bache, Hans Basbøll & Carl-Erik Lindberg (eds.), Tense, aspect and action: Empirical and theoretical contributions to language typology, 397–422. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight L
1961 Generality, gradience, and the all-or-none. The Hague: Mouton & co.Google Scholar
1968 Aspects of language. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.Google Scholar
Casati, Roberto
2006 The cognitive science of holes and cast shadows. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10(2). 54–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Childs, G. Tucker
1988 The phonology and morphology of Kisi. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley dissertation.Google Scholar
1989 Where do ideophones come from? Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 19(2). 55–76.Google Scholar
1994 African Ideophones. In Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala (eds.), Sound Symbolism,178–204. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H
1996 Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. & Richard J. Gerrig
1990 Quotations as demonstrations. Language 66(4). 764–805. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, William & Eva van Lier
2012 Language universals without universal categories. Theoretical Linguistics 38 (1-2). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Derbyshire, Desmond C
1979 Hixkaryana. Amsterdam: North-Holland Pub. Co.Google Scholar
Dhoorre, Cabdulqaadir Salaad & Mauro Tosco
1998 111 Somali ideophones. Journal of African Cultural Studies 11(2). 125–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diffloth, Gérard
1976 Expressives in Semai. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications 131. 249–264.Google Scholar
1980 Expressive phonology and prosaic phonology in Mon-Khmer. In Theraphan L. Thongkum (ed.), Studies in Mon-Khmer and Thai phonology and phonetics in honor of E. Henderson, 49–59. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press.Google Scholar
Dingemanse, Mark
2012 Advances in the cross-linguistic study of ideophones. Language and Linguistics Compass 6(10). 654–672. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Ideophones and gesture in everyday speech. Gesture 13(2). 143–165. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 Making new ideophones in Siwu: A case study of creative depiction. Pragmatics and Society 5(3). 384–405. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S
1997 Are grammatical relations universal? In Joan Bybee, John Haiman & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Essays on language function and language type, 115–143. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Egbokhare, Francis O
2001 Phonosemantic correspondences in Emai attributive ideophones. In F.K. Erhard Voeltz & Christa Kilian-Hatz, Ideophones, 87–96. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Floyd, Simeon
2012 Four types of reduplication in the Cha’palaa language of Ecuador. In Hein van der Voort & Gale Goodwin Gómez (eds.), Reduplication in South American Indian languages. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Gil, David
2005 From repetition to reduplication in Riau Indonesian. In Bernhard Hurch & Veronika Mattes (eds.), Studies on reduplication. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gombrich, E.H
2002 Art & illusion: A study in the psychology of pictorial representation, 6th edn. London/New York: Phaidon.Google Scholar
Gómez, Gale Goodwin
2009 Reduplication, ideophones, and onomatopoeic repetition in the Yanomami languages. Grazer Linguistische Studien 711. 21–38.Google Scholar
Goodman, Nelson
1968 Languages of art: An approach to the theory of symbols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles
1981 Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos
2004 The phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hamano, Shoko Saito
1998 The sound-symbolic system of Japanese. Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
Havránek, Bohuslav
1964 The functional differentiation of the standard language. In Paul L. Garvin (ed.), A Prague School reader on esthetics, literary structure, and style, 3–16. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Hodge, Gabrielle, and Lindsay Ferrara
2014 “Showing the Story: Enactment as Performance in Auslan Narratives.” In L. Gawne and J. Vaughan (eds.), Selected Papers from the 44th Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society , 372–97. Melbourne, Australia. [URL].
Hodge, Gabrielle & Trevor Johnston
2014 Points, depictions, gestures and enactment: Partly lexical and non-lexical signs as core elements of single clause-like units in Auslan (Australian Sign Language). Australian Journal of Linguistics 34(2). 262–291. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hurch, B., M. Kajitani, V. Mattes, U. Stangel & R. Vollmann
2008 Other reduplication phenomena. [URL].
Hutchinson, John & Gerd Gigerenzer
2005 Simple heuristics and rules of thumb: Where psychologists and behavioural biologists might meet. Behavioural processes 69(2). 97–124. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Inkelas, Sharon
2008 The dual theory of reduplication. Linguistics 46(2). 351–401. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Inkelas, Sharon & Cheryl Zoll
2005 Reduplication: Doubling in morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jacques, Guillaume
2013 Ideophones in Japhug Rgyalrong. Anthropological Linguistics 55(3). 256–287. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jakobson, Roman
1960 Linguistics and Poetics. In Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language, 350–377. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kadooka, Ken-Ichi
2007 Nihongo onomatope-goi-ni-okeru keitaiteki-on’inteki-taikeisei-ni-tuite [On morphological and phonological systematicity in Japanese onomatopoeic vocabularies]. Tokyo: Kurosio Publishers.Google Scholar
Kendon, Adam
1980 Gesticulation and speech: Two aspects of the process of utterance. In Mary Ritchie Key (ed.), The relationship of verbal and nonverbal communication, 207–227. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Kosslyn, Stephen M
1980 Image and mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kouwenberg, Silvia & Darlene LaCharité
2001 The iconic interpretations of reduplication: Issues in the study of reduplication in Caribbean Creole languages. European Journal of English Studies 5(1). 59–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kunene, Daniel P
1965 The ideophone in Southern Sotho. Journal of African Languages 41. 19–39.Google Scholar
2001 Speaking the act: The ideophone as a linguistic rebel. In F.K. Erhard Voeltz & Christa Kilian-Hatz (eds.), Ideophones, 183–191. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, Jin-Seong
1992 Phonology and sound symbolism of Korean ideophones. Indiana University dissertation.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C
1995 Interactional biases in human thinking. In Esther N. Goody (ed.), Social intelligence and interaction: Expressions and implications of the social bias in human intelligence, 221–260. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2000 Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature. MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Magritte, René
1929 Les mots et les images. La Révolution surréaliste 121. 32–33.Google Scholar
Martin, Samuel E
1962 Phonetic symbolism in Korean. In Nicholas Poppe (ed.), American studies in Altaic linguistics, 177–189. Bloomington: Indiana University Publications.Google Scholar
Matisoff, James A
2003 Aslian: Mon-Khmer of the Malay Peninsula. Mon-Khmer Studies: 1–58.Google Scholar
McGregor, William
2001 Ideophones as the source of verbs in Northern Australian languages. In F.K. Erhard Voeltz & Christa Kilian-Hatz (eds.), Ideophones, 205–221. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mihas, Elena
2012 Ideophones in Alto Perene (Arawak) from Eastern Peru. Studies in Language 36(2). 300–344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newman, Paul
1989 Reduplication and tone in Hausa ideophones. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 151. 248–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001 Are ideophones really as weird and extra-systematic as linguists make them out to be? In F.K. Erhard Voeltz & Christa Kilian-Hatz (eds.), Ideophones, 251–258. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick J
1992 Iconicity and generative grammar. Language 68(4). 756–796. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nuckolls, Janis B
1995 Quechua texts of perception. Semiotica 103(1/2). 145–169. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1996 Sounds like life: Sound-symbolic grammar, performance, and cognition in Pastaza Quechua. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pott, August Friedrich
1862 Doppelung (Reduplikation, Gemination): als eines der wichtigsten Bildungsmittel der Sprache, beleuchtet aus Sprachen aller Welttheile. Lemgo & Detmold: Meyer.Google Scholar
Rai, Novel Kishore, Balthasar Bickel, Goma Banjade, Martin Gaenszle, Elena Lieven, Netra Paudyal, Ichchha Rai & Sabine Stoll
2005 Triplication and ideophones in Chintang. In Yogendra Yadava, Govinda Bhattarai, Ram Raj Lohani, Balaram Prasain & Krishna Parajuli (eds.), Contemporary issues in Nepalese linguistics, 205–209. Kathmandu: Linguistic Society of Nepal.Google Scholar
Samarin, William J
1965 Perspective on African ideophones. African Studies 24(2). 117–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schwaiger, Thomas
2013 On the structure of reduplicants: Iconicity and preferred form in reduplication. In Nabil Hathout, Fabio Montermini & Jess Tseng (eds.), Morphology in Toulouse: Selected Proceedings of Décembrettes 71, 211–229. München: LINCOM Europa.Google Scholar
Shintel, Hadas, Howard C. Nusbaum & Arika Okrent
2006 Analog acoustic expression in speech communication. Journal of Memory and Language 55(2). 167–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sien, Nam-Cheol
1997 An autosegmental analysis of ideophones in Korean. University of Washington dissertation.Google Scholar
Slama-Cazacu, Tatiana
1976 Nonverbal components in message sequence:‘Mixed syntax’. In W.C. McCormack & S.A. Wurm (eds.), Language and man: Anthropological issues: 217–227. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Sonesson, Göran
1997 The ecological foundations of iconicity. In Irmengard Rauch & Gerald F. Carr (eds.), Semiotics around the world: Synthesis in diversity. Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of the IASS, Berkeley , June 12-18, 1994, 739–742. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Stolz, Thomas
2007 Re: duplication; Iconic vs counter-iconic principles (and their areal correlates). In Paolo Ramat & E. Roma (eds.), Europe and the Mediterranean as linguistic areas; Convergencies from a historical and typological perspective, 317–350. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stolz, Thomas, Cornelia Stroh & Aina Urdze
2011 Total reduplication: The areal linguistics of a potential universal. Oldenbourg: Akademie Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thun, Nils
1963 Reduplicative words in English; a study of formations of the types tick-tick, hurly-burly, and shilly-shally. Uppsala: Carl Bloms Boktryckeri.Google Scholar
Tufvesson, Sylvia
2011 Analogy-making in the Semai sensory world. The Senses and Society 6(1). 86–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walton, Kendall L
1973 Pictures and Make-Believe. The Philosophical Review 82(3). 283–319. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wang, Shih-ping
2005 Corpus-based approaches and discourse analysis in relation to reduplication and repetition. Journal of Pragmatics 37(4). 505–540. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Westermann, Diedrich Hermann
1927 Laut, Ton und Sinn in westafrikanischen Sudansprachen. In Franz Boas (ed.), Festschrift Meinhof, 315–328. Hamburg: L. Friederichsen.Google Scholar
Whitney, William Dwight
1874 Physei or thesei - natural or conventional? Transactions of the American Philological Association 61. 95–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. & Geoffrey K. Pullum
1987 Plain morphology and expressive morphology. In John Aske, Beery, Natasha, Laura Michaelis & Hana Filip (eds.), Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, VII1:330–340. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 42 other publications

Akinbo, Samuel Kayode & Michael Bulkaam
2024. Iconicity as the motivation for the signification and locality of deictic grammatical tones in Tal. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 9:1 DOI logo
Akita, Kimi
2019. Chapter 9. Mimetics, gaze, and facial expression in a multimodal corpus of Japanese. In Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives [Iconicity in Language and Literature, 16], ► pp. 229 ff. DOI logo
Akita, Kimi
2020. Modality-specificity of iconicity. In Operationalizing Iconicity [Iconicity in Language and Literature, 17], ► pp. 4 ff. DOI logo
Akita, Kimi
2021. A typology of depiction marking. Studies in Language 45:4 ► pp. 865 ff. DOI logo
Akita, Kimi & Prashant Pardeshi
2019. Introduction: Ideophones, mimetics, and expressives. In Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives [Iconicity in Language and Literature, 16], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
BERENT, IRIS, OUTI BAT-EL, DIANE BRENTARI, QATHERINE ANDAN & VERED VAKNIN-NUSBAUM
2021. Amodal phonology. Journal of Linguistics 57:3 ► pp. 499 ff. DOI logo
Beukeleers, Inez & Myriam Vermeerbergen
2022. Show Me What You’ve B/Seen: A Brief History of Depiction. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
Bonacchi, Silvia
2017. Chapter 14. What does reduplication intensify?. In Exploring Intensification [Studies in Language Companion Series, 189], ► pp. 289 ff. DOI logo
Capirci, Olga, Chiara Bonsignori & Alessio Di Renzo
2022. Signed Languages: A Triangular Semiotic Dimension. Frontiers in Psychology 12 DOI logo
Dingemanse, Mark
2017. Expressiveness and system integration: On the typology of ideophones, with special reference to Siwu. STUF - Language Typology and Universals 70:2 ► pp. 363 ff. DOI logo
Dingemanse, Mark
2018. Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3:1 DOI logo
Duggirala, Vasanta & Lalita Murty
2020. Iconicity of Telugu ideophones and full word reduplications. In Operationalizing Iconicity [Iconicity in Language and Literature, 17], ► pp. 40 ff. DOI logo
Ferrara, Lindsay & Rolf Piene Halvorsen
2017. Depicting and describing meanings with iconic signs in Norwegian Sign Language. Gesture 16:3 ► pp. 371 ff. DOI logo
Ferrara, Lindsay & Gabrielle Hodge
2018. Language as Description, Indication, and Depiction. Frontiers in Psychology 9 DOI logo
Hodge, Gabrielle & Kearsy Cormier
2019. Reported speech as enactment. Linguistic Typology 23:1 ► pp. 185 ff. DOI logo
Hodge, Gabrielle & Lindsay Ferrara
2022. Iconicity as Multimodal, Polysemiotic, and Plurifunctional. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
Hsu, Hui-Chieh, Geert Brône & Kurt Feyaerts
2021. When Gesture “Takes Over”: Speech-Embedded Nonverbal Depictions in Multimodal Interaction. Frontiers in Psychology 11 DOI logo
Kawahara, Shigeto & Jeff Moore
2021. How to express evolution in English Pokémon names. Linguistics 59:3 ► pp. 577 ff. DOI logo
Kentner, Gerrit, Isabelle Franz & Winfried Menninghaus
2022. Poetics of reduplicative word formation: evidence from a rating and recall experiment. Language and Cognition 14:3 ► pp. 333 ff. DOI logo
Kuhn, Jeremy, Carlo Geraci, Philippe Schlenker & Brent Strickland
2021. Boundaries in space and time: Iconic biases across modalities. Cognition 210 ► pp. 104596 ff. DOI logo
Kwon, Nahyun
2018. Iconicity correlated with vowel harmony in Korean ideophones. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology 9:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Kwon, Nahyun
2020. The relationship between iconicity and systematicity in Korean ideophones. In Operationalizing Iconicity [Iconicity in Language and Literature, 17], ► pp. 22 ff. DOI logo
Kwon, Nahyun & Shaoyun Yu
2018. Experimental evidence for the productivity of total reduplication in Japanese ideophones and ordinary vocabulary. Language Sciences 66 ► pp. 166 ff. DOI logo
Lindstromberg, Seth
2020. Surplus interword phonological similarity in English multiword units. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 16:1 ► pp. 95 ff. DOI logo
Mattes, Veronika
2017. Iconicity in the lexicon. Studies in Language 41:4 ► pp. 813 ff. DOI logo
Meurant, Laurence
2022. Put another way. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 36 ► pp. 145 ff. DOI logo
Mokhathi-Mbhele, Masechaba Mahloli L
2023. Sesotho ideophones as personal names: A systemic functional linguistics approach. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 41:4 ► pp. 448 ff. DOI logo
Naser, Angelo Ali & Sharon Rose
2020. Ideophones in Moro. Faits de Langues 51:1 ► pp. 37 ff. DOI logo
Odiegwu, Nancy Chiagolum & Jesús Romero-Trillo
2023. Gradience in iconicity. Review of Cognitive Linguistics DOI logo
Patel-Grosz, Pritty, Salvador Mascarenhas, Emmanuel Chemla & Philippe Schlenker
2023. Super Linguistics: an introduction. Linguistics and Philosophy 46:4 ► pp. 627 ff. DOI logo
Ponsonnet, Maïa
2018. Expressive values of reduplication in Barunga Kriol (northern Australia). Studies in Language 42:1 ► pp. 226 ff. DOI logo
Ponsonnet, Maïa & Marine Vuillermet
2018. Introduction. Studies in Language 42:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Schwaiger, Thomas
2018. The derivational nature of reduplication: Towards a Functional Discourse Grammar account of a non-concatenative morphological process. Word Structure 11:1 ► pp. 118 ff. DOI logo
SLONIMSKA, ANITA, ASLI ÖZYÜREK & OLGA CAPIRCI
2021. Using depiction for efficient communication in LIS (Italian Sign Language). Language and Cognition 13:3 ► pp. 367 ff. DOI logo
Stanlaw, James
2020. Ideophone. In The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Taitz, Alan, M. Florencia Assaneo, Natalia Elisei, Mónica Trípodi, Laurent Cohen, Jacobo D. Sitt, Marcos A. Trevisan & Niels O. Schiller
2018. The audiovisual structure of onomatopoeias: An intrusion of real-world physics in lexical creation. PLOS ONE 13:3 ► pp. e0193466 ff. DOI logo
Toratani, Kiyoko
2018. Particle drop of mimetics in Japanese. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 5:1 ► pp. 39 ff. DOI logo
Vandenitte, Sébastien
2022. Showing where you stand. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 36 ► pp. 46 ff. DOI logo
Vandenitte, Sébastien
2023. When referents are seen and heard. In Reference [Studies in Language Companion Series, 228], ► pp. 127 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Xiaoxi
2022. Sound symbolism in Chinese children’s literature. Cognitive Linguistics 33:1 ► pp. 95 ff. DOI logo
Willemsen, Jeroen & Ehm Hjorth Miltersen
2020. The expression of vulgarity, force, severity and size. Studies in Language 44:3 ► pp. 659 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. Italian Sign Language from a Cognitive and Socio-semiotic Perspective [Gesture Studies, 9], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 april 2024. 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.