the university of chicago the phonology and ... - SIL International

Ideophones often have unusual phonological features, such as overly short or long
duration, segments which are not a part of the regular phonemic inventory, and sequences
of segments which violate phonotactic constraints. They may have unusual
morphological features, most notably the repetition of a word. Syntactically, they are
often set apart from the rest of the sentence. Pragmatically, they are often only found in
declarative sentences and certain types of discourse.
Several of these features may be found in Mono ideophones. This includes
aberrant syllable patterns; for example the word D= D= D= D= ‘brightly’ has a CVV syllable
pattern. There are unusual co-occurrence patterns; for example, the word DM DM DM = = = = ‘hot’
contains a high vowel following a secondary articulation. There are unusual phonemes;
for example, Mono ideophones have a disproportionately large number of occurrences of
the labial flap, as in the word MA(CA MA(CA ‘hot’. There are unusual tonal patterns, such as the
rising contour tone in the word F( F( F( F( ‘near’. Finally, ideophones are often repeated, as in
the expression in (14). The entire word is repeated rather than just the first syllable,
which is the case for verb reduplication (see Chapter 7).
(14) J( J( J( J( MA(CAMA(CA MA(CAMA(CA MA(CAMA(CA MA(CAMA(CA
sun pound:NF
‘It is hot’.
RED-hot
This having been said, the following word shapes are attested for Mono adverbs:
(15) Word shapes of Mono adverbs
CV @A @A @A @A
‘also’
F F F F ‘different’
C> C> C> C>
‘sound of a drum (ideophone)
CVV D= D= D= D=
‘brightly (ideophone)’
CVVV D=(= D=(= D=(= D=(=
‘empty-handed (ideophone)’
VCV =J= =J=
‘thus’
CVCV =J5= =J5= =J5= =J5=
‘quickly’
D=C= D=C=
‘hard (ideophone)’
F=D= F=D= F=D= F=D=
‘wide open (ideophone)’
VCVCV —
CVCVCV FCM FCM FCM FCM
‘suddenly (ideophone)’
89