IDEOPHONES WORLDWIDE
n Ideophones are abundant in natural and heightened speech, notably in Africa, but absent from typical example sentences, hence their
failure to be
treated adequately in typical grammars and dictionaries.
n They are hard to elicit since their
existence is unpredictable and speakers have no natural ‘hook’ to recall them
nTheir elusive nature, in grammatical
terms, has made them poor relations to other word
classes and they have been little treated by
the schools of grammar dominated by syntax (see Welmers 1973 for comment on lacunae in research).