Schedule 76. StuTS

“Marked words that depict sensory imagery” is how Dingemanse (2019: 16, 2023: 466) quite broadly defines ideophones. They are ‘marked’ as they often stand out from other elements of a given language. They ‘depict’, rather than describe ‘sensory imagery’, be it sound, movement or other domains in the sense that they allow the speaker to tow the listener into a scene once experienced by the speaker. Ideophones are fairly widespread but nonetheless often overlooked elements. This study looks at ideophones in the South Central [Kuki-Chin] branch of Trans-Himalayan [Sino-Tibetan]. I first examine ideophones in the Thadou language (TH, Eastern India) on the basis of an annotated corpus (see Haokip 2021). In the second part, I compare the results to descriptions of ideophones in related languages. Patent (1998), Chelliah et al. (2020) among others have compared their data to a handful of related languages, but thus far, an exhaustive comparison of ideophones in South Central languages is missing. In Thadou, ideophones always occur post-verbally and as a full or partial reduplication of a monosyllabic element. They usually collocate with specific verbs which is quite common in the broader region (see e.g. Lahaussois 2023 or Modi and Post 2020). Ideophones often occur in pairs which can highlight different aspects such as size or connotation. The number of ideophones employed by the languages of the area is usually quite large and more often than not they count in the hundreds as in Thadou itself (Haokip 2014: 71).

“Marked words that depict sensory imagery” is how Dingemanse (2019: 16, 2023: 466) quite broadly defines ideophones. They are ‘marked’ as they often stand out from other elements of a given language. They ‘depict’, rather than describe ‘sensory imagery’, be it sound, movement or other domains in the sense that they allow the speaker to tow the listener into a scene once experienced by the speaker. Ideophones are fairly widespread but nonetheless often overlooked elements. This study looks at ideophones in the South Central branch of Trans-Himalayan. In the first part I examine ideophones in the Thadou language (TH, Eastern India) on the basis of an annotated corpus (see Haokip 2021) of eight texts in total, five of which are traditional narratives and the remaining ones are monologues about local life, expanding on the previous work by Haokip (2014). In the second part I compare the results from Thadou to descriptions of ideophones in other South Central languages. Patent (1998), Haokip (2014), Chelliah et al. (2020) among others have compared their data to a handful of related languages and Abbi (1990) and Lahaussois (2023) shed light on other areas, but thus far, an exhaustive comparison of ideophones in South Central languages is missing.

In Thadou, ideophones always occur post-verbally and as a full or partial reduplication of a monosyllabic element. They usually collocate with specific verbs – ideophones collocating with particular verbs or single members of other word classes are quite common in the broader region as can be seen in Lahaussois (2023) for the Kiranti languages (TH, Nepal) or in Modi and Post (2020) for Adi and Milang (TH, Northeastern India).

Ideophones often occur in pairs and such pairs can highlight different aspects such as size or connotation. Thadou and other South Central languages employ sound symbolism, which can be used to oppose e.g. the aforementioned size differences found in oppositional pairs via differences in vowel quality. The number of ideophones employed by the languages of the area is usually quite large and more often than not they count in the hundreds as in Thadou itself (Haokip 2014: 71), but also in Lamkang (TH, Eastern India; Chelliah et al. 2020: 173) or in Mizo (TH, Eastern India; Chhangte 1993: 120–130).

With this study I want to contribute to the still inconclusive investigation of ideophones in South Central languages.

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References

Abbi, Anvita. 1990. Reduplication in Tibeto Burman languages of South Asia. Southeast Asian Studies 28(2). 171–181. https://doi.org/10.20495/tak.28.2_171

Chelliah, Shobhana, Evaline Blair, Sumshot Khular & Melissa Robinson. 2020. Reduplication in Lamkang: Form, feeling, and function. In Jeffery Williams (ed.), Expressive morphology in the languages of South Asia, 167–186. London/New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315265629

Chhangte, Lalnunthangi. 1993. Mizo syntax. Eugene: University of Oregon dissertation.

Dingemanse, Mark. 2011. The meaning and use of ideophones in Siwu. Nijmegen: Radboud University dissertation.

Dingemanse, Mark. 2012. Advances in the cross-linguistic study of ideophones. Language and Linguistics Compass 6(10). 654–672. https://doi.org/10.1002/lnc3.361

Dingemanse, Mark. 2019. ‘Ideophone’ as a comparative concept. In Kimi Akita & Prashant Pardeshi (eds.), Ideophones, mimetics and expressives (Iconicity in language and literature 16), 13–33. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.16.02din

Dingemanse, Mark. 2023. Ideophones. In Eva van Lier (ed.), The Oxford handbook of word classes, 466–476. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/u96zt

Haokip, Pauthang. 2014. Word formation in Thadou. Himalayan Linguistics 13(2). 58–82. https://doi.org/10.5070/H913224024

Haokip, Pauthang. 2021. Annotated texts of the languages of Barak Valley. Denton: Aquiline Books. https://doi.org/10.12794/sps.corsal-060-1

Lahaussois, Aimée. 2023. Ideophonic patterns in Kiranti languages and beyond. Folia Linguistica 57(1). 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1515/flin-2022-2053

Modi, Yankee & Mark Post. 2020. The functional value of formal exuberance: Isomorphism and expressive intensification in Adi and Milang. In Jeffery Williams (ed.), Expressive morphology in the languages of South Asia, 187–212. London/New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315265629

Patent, Jason D. 1998. A willy-nilly look at Lai ideophones. Linguistics of the Tibeto Burman Area 21(1). 155–200. https://dx.doi.org/10.32655/LTBA.21.1.04

Info

Day: 2024-11-23
Start time: 12:00
Duration: 00:30
Room: 00A03 CNMS
Track: Typology and Variational linguistics
Language: en

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