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Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
An ideophone (also known as a mimetic or expressive) is a member of the class of words that depict sensory imagery or sensations,[1] evoking ideas of action, sound, movement, color, or shape. The class of ideophones is the least common syntactic category cross-linguistically; it occurs mostly in African, Australian, and Amerindian languages, and sporadically elsewhere. Ideophones resemble interjections but are different owing to their special phonetic or derivational characteristics, and based on their syntactic function within the sentence. They may include sounds that deviate from the language's phonological system, imitating—often in a repetitive manner—sounds of movement, animal noises, bodily sounds, noises made by tools or machines, and the like.[2]
While English does have ideophonic or onomatopoetic expressions, it does not contain a proper class of ideophones because any English onomatopoeic word can be included in one of the classical categories. For example, la-di-da functions as an adjective while others, such as zigzag, may function as a verb, adverb or adjective, depending on the clausal context. In the sentence "The rabbit zigzagged across the meadow", the verb zigzag takes the past -ed verb ending. In contrast, the hypothetical example *"The rabbit zigzag zigzag across the meadow" emulates an ideophone but is not idiomatic to English.[3]
Dictionaries of languages like Japanese, Korean, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu list thousands of ideophones.[4] Sometimes ideophones are called phonosemantic to indicate that it is not a grammatical word class in the traditional sense of the word (like verb or noun), but rather a lexical class based on the special relationship between form and meaning exhibited by ideophones. In the discipline of linguistics, ideophones have sometimes been overlooked or treated as a subgroup of interjections.[5]
The word ideophone was coined in 1935 by Clement Martyn Doke, who defined it in his Bantu Linguistic Terminology as follows.[6]
A vivid representation of an idea in sound. A word, often onomatopoeic, which describes a predicate, qualificative or adverb in respect to manner, color, sound, smell, action, state or intensity.
Ideophones evoke sensory events. A well known instance of ideophones are onomatopoeic words—words that imitate the sound (of the event) they refer to. Some ideophones may be derived from onomatopoeic notions. In many languages, however, ideophones do not solely represent sound.[6] For instance, in Gbaya, kpuk 'a rap on the door' may be onomatopoeic, but other ideophones depict motion and visual scenes: loɓoto-loɓoto 'large animals plodding through mud', kiláŋ-kiláŋ 'in a zigzagging motion', pɛɗɛŋ-pɛɗɛŋ 'razor sharp'.[7]
Ideophones are often characterized as iconic or sound-symbolic words, meaning that there can be a resemblance between their form and their meaning. For instance, in West-African languages, voiced consonants and low tone in ideophones are often connected to largeness and heaviness, whereas voiceless consonants and high tones tend to relate to smallness and lightness.[8] Reduplication figures quite prominently in ideophones, often conveying a sense of repetition or plurality present in the evoked event.[9] The iconicity of ideophones is shown by the fact that people can guess the meanings of ideophones from various languages at a level above chance.[10] However, the form of ideophones does not completely relate to their meaning; as conventionalized words, they contain arbitrary, language-specific phonemes just like other parts of the vocabulary.[citation needed]
Ideophones are also frequently accompanied by gesture and expressive intonational patterns (Nuckolls, 2019).
The grammatical function of ideophones varies by language. In some languages (e.g. Welayta, Yir-Yiront, Semai, Korean), they form a separate word class, while in others, they occur across a number of different word classes (e.g. Mundang, Ewe, Sotho, Hausa).[11]
Despite this diversity, ideophones show a number of robust regularities across languages. One is that they are often marked in the same way as quoted speech and demonstrations.[12] Sometimes ideophones can form a complete utterance on their own, as in English "ta-da!" or Japanese jaan (ジャーン; ta-da).[13] However, in such cases the word ideophone is used as a synonym to interjection. Proper ideophones may occur within utterances, depicting a scene described by other elements of the utterance, as in Japanese Taro wa sutasuta to haya-aruki o shita "Taro walked hurriedly' (literally 'Taro did haste-walk sutasuta').[14] Ideophones are more like illustrations of events than responses to events. An ideophone like Gbaya kiláŋ-kiláŋ 'in a zigzagging motion' displays a certain resemblance to the event (for instance, its irregular vowels and tones depicting the irregularity of the motion).[citation needed]
Languages may differ in the context in which ideophones are used. In some languages, ideophones are primarily used in spoken language (e.g. narrative contexts) and are rarely encountered in written language.[7] In other languages (e.g. Ewe, Japanese), ideophones can be freely used in all registers. In general, however, ideophones tend to occur more extensively in spoken language because of their expressive or dramaturgic function.[15]
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The Japanese language has thousands of ideophones, often called mimetics. The constructions are quite metrical 2-2, or 3-3, where morae play a role in the symmetry. The first consonant of the second word of the reduplication may become voiced if phonological conditions allow. Japanese ideophones are used extensively in daily conversations as well as in the written language.[citation needed]
The Tamil language uses many ideophones, both in colloquial and formal usage. Ideophones are often, but not always, in the form of irattaik kilavi (இரட்டைக் கிளவி), meaning-free words that are only used in double succession.
In Xhosa, as in closely related Zulu, ideophones can convey very complex experiential impressions or can just strengthen meanings of other words. The ideophone is often introduced using the verb thi 'say'.[citation needed]
Using thi:
Without using thi:
Andazi
I do not know
ncam.
IDEO
'I do not know exactly.'
Ndime
I stood
bhuxe
IDEO
phambi
before
kwakhe.
him.
'I stood motionless before him.'
Expressives form a major lexical category in Mundari, even though this language seems to lack fundamental distinction between parts of speech. A Mundari expressive contains two phonologically-mimicking elements in which both have no independent lexical meanings. According to Osada (2008), "the syntax of expressives has never been described. Expressives can occupy any place, that is, in a predicate, complement, or argument slot. As the head of a predicate, expresives can take derivational suffixes, for example, passive, reflexive, benefactive, and aspect markers. Expressives can also form serial verb constructions."[16]
ini-aʔ
that.person-GEN
isiɽisikiɽi
coquettish.laugh
ka=ɲ
NEG=1SG
suku-a
like-IND
'I don't like her coquettish laughing.'
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
The dictionary definition of ideophone at WiktionarySource: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
An ideophone (also known as a mimetic or expressive) is a member of the class of words that depict sensory imagery or sensations, evoking ideas of action, sound, movement, color, or shape. The class of ideophones is the least common syntactic category cross-linguistically; it occurs mostly in African, Australian, and Amerindian languages, and sporadically elsewhere. Ideophones resemble interjections but are different owing to their special phonetic or derivational characteristics, and based on their syntactic function within the sentence. They may include sounds that deviate from the language's phonological system, imitating—often in a repetitive manner—sounds of movement, animal noises, bodily sounds, noises made by tools or machines, and the like. While English does have ideophonic or onomatopoetic expressions, it does not contain a proper class of ideophones because any English onomatopoeic word can be included in one of the classical categories. For example, la-di-da functions as an adjective while others, such as zigzag, may function as a verb, adverb or adjective, depending on the clausal context. In the sentence "The rabbit zigzagged across the meadow", the verb zigzag takes the past -ed verb ending. In contrast, the hypothetical example *"The rabbit zigzag zigzag across the meadow" emulates an ideophone but is not idiomatic to English. Dictionaries of languages like Japanese, Korean, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu list thousands of ideophones. Sometimes ideophones are called phonosemantic to indicate that it is not a grammatical word class in the traditional sense of the word (like verb or noun), but rather a lexical class based on the special relationship between form and meaning exhibited by ideophones. In the discipline of linguistics, ideophones have sometimes been overlooked or treated as a subgroup of interjections.
This article is list of ideophones in Basque language based on Ibarretxe-Antuñano's (2006) trilingual dictionary Hizkuntzaren Bihotzean - Euskal Onomatopeien Hiztegia.
Niconico, Inc. (Japanese: ニコニコ, Hepburn: Nikoniko), known before 2012 as Nico Nico Douga (ニコニコ動画, Niko Niko Dōga), is a Japanese video sharing service based in Tokyo, Japan. "Niconico" or "nikoniko" is the Japanese ideophone for smiling. As of 2021, Niconico is the 34th most-visited website in Japan, according to Alexa Internet. The site won the Japanese Good Design Award in 2007, and an Honorary Mention of the Digital Communities category at Prix Ars Electronica 2008. Between June 8, 2024, and August 5, 2024, its servers were affected by a cyberattack and the website was partially active.
Kkakdugi (Korean: 깍두기) or diced radish kimchi is a variety of kimchi in Korean cuisine. Usually, Korean radish (called mu 무 in Korean) is used, but other vegetables or fruits can also be used. Kkakduk-kkakduk is an ideophone related to dicing/cubing. Kimchi made with radish that are not diced into cubes are not called kkakdugi. Kkakdugi is a popular banchan (side dish) enjoyed by Koreans and others.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.