Conclusions
n Our knowledge of the extent of ideophones in particular African languages is in part because their recording
reflects the worldview of
the compiler of the lexicon.
n Our knowledge of their use is often
highly defective even for language where the lexical forms have been documented because of the way we write grammars.
n It is clear that ideophones can be
phonotactically, morphologically
or syntactically marked, but this is not a necessary requirement
n It is probably better to treat them as
an ‘experiential’ class, some thing which describes and intensifies the interaction with the sensory world
n and to acknowledge that African
languages at least also have other related word classes which also remain in descriptive limbo