Kolokuma ideophones.pdf - Roger Blench

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Roger Blench Izọn templatic ideophones Circulated for comment gbáloo being too salty (of food) gbáloogbaloo excessively salty Table 9 also illustrates the absence of reduplicated forms for some simplex ideophones. Equally common are missing simplex forms. The following are intriguing examples of this; neither sápụ nor sáwa are attested in Nzọn. sápụsàpụ sound of a deep-water fish jumping in water sáwasàwa sound of a small surface fish jumping in water and making a splash Reduplication can also follow different patterns to give distinct semantic outcomes. It is likely that there was previously a simple ideophone sụrẹ meaning something like ‘tattered’, which has an attested extended form sụrẹrẹẹ ‘looking sorrowful, poor and preoccupied; badly dressed’. The reduplication of the simplex yields sụrẹsụrẹ́ ‘with tattered clothes’ and the reduplicated extended form sụ́ rẹrẹsụ̀rẹrẹ ‘walking sorrowfully’. Nzọn also has the possibility of the triplication to develop further subtle distinctions of meaning. Triplication is not a common term in the linguistics literature, and was probably introduced by Blust (2001) in describing the morphology of Thao, an Austronesian language of Taiwan. Table 5 shows three examples of triplication; sọ́ ị ‘small animal leaping’, kpọ́ ọ ‘sound of knocking on a door’ and gbọọlọọ́ ‘freely, unhindered’. Table 5. Triplication in Nzọn ideophones Nzọn Gloss sọ́ ị leaping (as duiker) sọ́ ịsọ̀ị continuous leaping (as by small person with slender legs, or duiker sọ́ ịsọ̀ịsọ́ị describes walking with slender legs, like the jacana kpọ́ ọ sound of knocking on a particular door kpọ́ ọkpọọ general sound of knocking on a door kpọ́ ọkpọọkpọọ sound produced when a door is knocked upon with the hand or something hard gbọọlọọ́ freely, undisturbed, unhindered gbọọlọgbọ́ọlọ tenderly, flexibly (as of beautiful girl) gbọ́ ọlọgbọ̀ọlọgbọ́ ọlọ slow, stately movement of a long-limbed but flexible-bodied person A range of triplicated ideophones exists which have no simplex counterparts. ̣ ̣ ̣ kpínkpìnkpín talking through the nose kpọkpọkpọọ́ empty, bare (as when the entire soup in a plate is licked up, leaving it totally bare) pósapòsapósa describes walking on slippery ground covered with some water pụ́ kẹpụ̀kẹpụ́ kẹ gossiping Ideophones can be formed from nouns and verbs through reduplication. Table 6 shows a set of nouns which are reduplicated using the same rules as above, deletion of final doubled vowels and stem-tone shifting rightwards. 6
Roger Blench Izọn templatic ideophones Circulated for comment ̣ ̣ Table 6. Reduplicating nouns and verbs to form ideophones Single Gloss Doubled Gloss bábala to proceed by trial and error; attempt to do something bábarabàbara doing things in a confused way, with uncertainty ọbará human blood ọbara-ọbára bloody ọkpáka carapace of tortoise ọkpáka- having hard scales, lumpy (as fufu) ọkpaka ọru ú method, order, art ọru -ọrú methodical, methodically 3.5 Consonant alternation and size symbolism Another attested type of symbolism which is only exemplified by single cases is initial consonant alternation. In the following case, s- alternates with t- to denote height of the water. síkpa wading in shallow water tíkpa wading with difficulty, in water up to knee-level In the following case, which is also unique, sangaláà undergoes incomplete reduplication to sangalangáà, thereby retaining its long falling tone on the final vowel, normally deleted in complete reduplication. The link with transitivity, explored in §3.2 also seems to apply here. However, in the case of yangaláà, s- alternates with y- to denote that the ideophone is applied to someone fatter. sangaláà lanky, tall and lean (people) sangalangáà have bad posture, as of a tall lanky person yangaláà of a bad posture, as of a person who is a little fatter than sangalangáà Another unique alternation is b ~ m; balakáà cross-eyed (of person) ~ maaláà, malakáà where no other case of an association with size symbolism is recorded in the lexicon. The logic behind these alternations is opaque, but the most likely explanation is that they are somehow relics of previous consonantal templates (§4.). Usually C 2 is lost and then C 3 but if C 1 were lost, and a new initial added by analogy, this could explain the synchronic alternations, and perhaps also the rare ideophones with a vowel initial (§4.1). 3.6 Tone and semantics The evidence given in this paper suggests that morphological development of ideophones is usually accompanied by expected tone patterns but that these are never absolute rules. For example, in the triplicated ideophones in Table 5 and the examples following, the expected tone pattern is H-L-H, but at least one triplicated form does not obey this, kpọ́ọkpọọkpọọ ‘knocking hard on a door’. Similarly the rule that the tone of a reduplicated form is a polar tone reflecting the theme tone is true in most but not all cases. There is some evidence that apparently irregular tones may be tonal symbolism related to transitivity, as the set in Table 7 shows; Table 7. Tonal morphology in ideophones Nzọn Gloss bákala twist; bend; distort bákalabàkala unreliable; untrustworthy balakáà cross-eyed (of person) bakalabákala twisted, bent, askew 7
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Kolokuma ideophones.pdf - Roger Blench

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