Ideophones in Kiswahili: Dramatic words in language

 

An ideophone is any word in a certain word class evoking ideas in sound imitation to express an action, manner, or property. Ideophones are able to elicit an emotional response due to their synesthetic qualities and/or mimicry of natural sounds. In Kiswahili, sounds connected with a definite idea, without being necessarily onomatopoeic, occur rather frequently especially in narrative and descriptive rhetorical styles.

They are usually connected with a verb and consist of monosyllabic or disyllabic invariables, which are often reduplicated or even repeated several times, e.g., kuanguka pu 'to fall down suddenly'; kunuka fee 'to emit an unpleasant odor'; kulala fofofo ‘to sleep deeply’; kulowa chepechepe ‘to soak to the skin’. Many ideophones have, however, been lexicalized, e.g., kochokocho in [noun] kochokocho, for example, viazi kochokocho 'plenty of potatoes’, now used as an adjective with the meaning. Others have become productive as verbal roots, e.g., mwaa, applying to gushing out of liquids, from which the verb mwaga 'pour out' is derived. Similarly, ngongo, applying to the sound from repeated hitting, from which the verb gonga ‘hit’ is derived.

The word ‘ideophone’ was coined in 1935 by Clement Martyn Doke, who defined it in his Bantu Linguistic Terminology as follows:

“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.”

It is from the study of Bantu languages that ideophones were deciphered and became a field of study for all other languages in the world including English.

Due to their sensory and emotive effect, ideophones are marked in the sense that they stand out from other words. Claims about the marked nature of ideophones abound in the literature: ideophones are “very striking” (Vidal 1852:15 on Yoruba), “distinguished by their aberrant phonology” (Kruspe 2004:102 on Semelai), “structurally marked” (Klamer 2002:263 on Kambera), “phonologically peculiar” (Newman 1968:107 on Hausa), and show “distinctive phonology, involving special rules of length, tone, and stress” (Epps 2005:869 on Hup), to take just five typologically divergent languages.

Ideophones are also depictions, that is, they are special in the way they signify their referents. This property can be illustrated by comparing two ways of representing ‘accumulation’ in Kiswahili. Consider the aphorism “habahaba hujaza kibaba” and the ideophone habahaba, with roughly the same meaning. The first ‘haba’ describes the quantity(little) whereas the second ‘haba’ depicts the act of adding little by little. A similar ideophone is ‘mdogomdogo’ with similar meaning. The depiction habahaba/mdogomdogo — is a little performance, inviting us to “look” in such a way that we make believe we are actually experiencing the scene depicted. In depictive signs, in the ideophone literature, the special mode of signification of ideophones has been captured by many terms, the most prominent of which are “expressive” (Diffloth 1972), “affecto-imagistic” (Kita 1997), “performative” (Nuckolls 1995), and “mimesis” (Güldemann 2008).

Due to their ability to evoke sensory imagery and emotion in people, ideophones have been widely used especially in marketing campaigns. Twentieth century scientific taxonomies of sensory receptors, include not just extero-receptors (sight, sound, smell, touch and taste) but also intero-receptors and proprio-receptors (Geurts 2002 and references therein). The semantic range covered by ideophones points to this more inclusive view of senses: they evoke not just perceptions of the external world, but also kinaesthetic sensations, interoceptive experience and balance.

 

References

Mbunda, F.L. (1976). Mwalimu wa lugha; Kiswahili

Polome, E.C. (1967). Swahili language handbook

Retrieval 12^th June 2023, from https://ideophone.org/working-definition/. With references therein