Abstract: …The sound must seem an echo to the sense… All languages manifest two kinds of expressions, prosaic and iconic. In the prosaic layer, meaning–sound correspondences are arbitrary; for example, there is nothing in the string of English sounds d-o-g or Lithuanian š-u-o ‘dog’ that would inherently evoke the image of a devoted furry canine. Conversely, the iconic layer manifests sound–meaning correlations that are not arbitrary. There are two varieties of iconic expressions: onomatopoetic and ideophonic. In both varieties, specific sounds evoke specific meanings, although for different reasons. Onomatopoetic expressions directly imitate sound, as exemplified by the English word p-o-p or the Lithuanian word ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Quechua language; Navajo language; Navajo poetry; Basque language; Munda languages; Finnish language; Japanese language PubDate: 2017-05-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Ideophones are a class of expressions found throughout the world’s languages.1 They are of interest to linguists because of their fascinating structural features, their complex semantics, and their discourse properties, which draw interlocutors into a shared experience of simulated perceptions and evoked memories. As Dingemanse has stated: “they show rather than tell, depict rather than describe, enact rather than simply refer” (Dingemanse 2014: 387). Since the discovery of ideophones a lot of attention has been given to analyzing them in ways that do justice to their language-specific characteristics, while also attempting to grapple with them as a crosslinguistic phenomenon. More recently, with the help of much ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Quechua language; Navajo language; Navajo poetry; Basque language; Munda languages; Finnish language; Japanese language PubDate: 2017-05-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Language is rough drafts for poetry Over the last several years, I’ve tried to think through – from an ethnographic and linguistically informed perspective – what it means to translate various poems written in Navajo by Rex Lee Jim (see Webster 2006, 2013, 2014a, 2015a, 2015b; Mitchell and Webster 2011).1 Much of this thinking through has been founded on uneasiness with literal translations of the poems (see Mitchell and Webster 2011). Part of what I have discovered, in talking with Navajos about such work, is that many of the poems are predicated on punning (or what Navajos sometimes call saad aheełt’éégo diits’a’) (Webster 2013, 2015b). Jim, to his credit, years ago told me that “sounds were very ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Quechua language; Navajo language; Navajo poetry; Basque language; Munda languages; Finnish language; Japanese language PubDate: 2017-05-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Interest in sound symbolism is not new in linguistics.1 Indeed, since Plato’s Cratylus there have been multiple attempts to explain how and why some sounds are related to some meanings (see Allot 1995, Nuckolls 1999, Magnus 2001, for a review). Despite this interest, the role of these sound-meaning-motivated words in general linguistic theory has been until recently quite marginal. There might be different converging factors that explain this situation. I will name just three that are relevant to the topic of this paper: (i) statements made by influential linguists such as de Saussure who argued that “onomatopoeic formations are never organic elements of a linguistic system. Besides, their number is ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Quechua language; Navajo language; Navajo poetry; Basque language; Munda languages; Finnish language; Japanese language PubDate: 2017-05-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Like many languages across continents and language families, the Munda languages of South Asia use sound symbolism as a way to represent the world around them. In the Munda languages, this often takes form of mimetic1 reduplication. In this article, we present an extensive empirical typology of mimetic reduplication in seven Munda languages: Ho, Kera Mundari, Kharia, Mundari, Remo (Bondo), Santali, and Sora (Savara). These languages have been selected because we have original elicitation materials collected in the field, with the exception of Mundari for which we have the dialectal fieldwork on Kera Mundari. The data collected in the field is paired with data culled from legacy lexicographic sources. ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Quechua language; Navajo language; Navajo poetry; Basque language; Munda languages; Finnish language; Japanese language PubDate: 2017-05-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Ideophones generally represent a significant part of the lexicon of human languages (see Alpher 1994, Childs 1994, Dingemanse 2012, among many others, for a general overview). They are uninflected words (‘bare lexemes’ according to Creissels 2001), often of an onomatopoeic character (or at least with a phonologically deviant organization), which typically encode pivotal events (natural sounds, movements, lights, beats, etc.).1 Ideophones have often been characterized in the literature as an independent syntactic category (e.g., Evans and Levinson 2009). It is true that they usually exhibit distinctive phonology (such as vowel changes to signal switches in size or intensity, and/or unusual phonemes or ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Quechua language; Navajo language; Navajo poetry; Basque language; Munda languages; Finnish language; Japanese language PubDate: 2017-05-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Consider the following Finnish construction involving a string of two nouns, one of which is the ideophone kanttura:1 (1) In Finnish linguistics, this structure, and its verbal parallel, are usually labelled as “colorative” (Rytkönen 1937; see also Luttinen 2000, Jarva and Kytölä 2007, Leinonen 2010, among others). The sequence involves two nouns: the first, N1, is a semantically neutral noun in genitive case; the second, N2, is an ideophone (such as kanttura) inflected in accordance with its syntactic position. The earliest works that mention these types of constructions are descriptive and pre-theoretical (e.g., von Becker 1824, Tunkelo 1919–1920, Rytkönen 1937).2 In more recent work, a limited ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Quechua language; Navajo language; Navajo poetry; Basque language; Munda languages; Finnish language; Japanese language PubDate: 2017-05-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Different languages incorporate ideophonic elements in different ways.1 This article argues that ideophones retain some of their prototypical features even when ideophones are well integrated into a linguistic system. The data come from Japanese, which is known as a language with a huge ideophonic inventory (Kakehi et al. 1996, Hamano 1998). Japanese ideophones show a high degree of morphosyntactic integration compared to some other languages, particularly in their colloquial and childish uses. However, close investigations based on quantitative and qualitative methods show that ideophonic features and grammatical constraints are retained in integrated Japanese ideophones. This article pursues the issue ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Quechua language; Navajo language; Navajo poetry; Basque language; Munda languages; Finnish language; Japanese language PubDate: 2017-05-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: With the publication of this issue it has been a year since I took over as Editor, and eighteen months since the journal’s move to Cambridge University Press. A great deal has happened since my last Editor’s note, published in July 2016. I am very happy to report that we are receiving an increasing number of high-quality submissions of articles and squibs, and that we also have a healthy number of thematic issues in the works. While this means that the time from acceptance to print publication of an article has increased slightly, articles are published online as soon as they are ready, in the FirstView section of the journal’s website. The journal is now, as of 2017, published four rather than ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Quechua language; Navajo language; Navajo poetry; Basque language; Munda languages; Finnish language; Japanese language PubDate: 2017-05-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: La publication de ce numéro marque le premier anniversaire de mon arrivée au poste de rédactrice, et dix-huit mois depuis le début de notre collaboration avec Cambridge University Press (CUP). Beaucoup de choses se sont passées depuis ma dernière note, parue au mois de juillet 2016. Je suis très heureuse de signaler que nous recevons de plus en plus de soumissions d’articles et de notules de haute qualité, et que nous avons également un bon nombre de numéros thématiques en préparation. Bien que cette abondance allonge légèrement le délai entre l’acceptation d’un article et sa version imprimée, les articles sont publiés en ligne dès qu’ils sont prêts, dans la section FirstView du site Web de la ... Read More Keywords: Grammar, Comparative and general; Quechua language; Navajo language; Navajo poetry; Basque language; Munda languages; Finnish language; Japanese language PubDate: 2017-05-18T00:00:00-05:00
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