IDEOPHONES WORLDWIDE
nIn many
languages, ideophones have distinctive phonotactics, although this is not always the
case.
nBut they do
always have highly specific applications to the sensory world and describe visual, aural and
emotional experiences
in ways hardly paralleled elsewhere in the lexicon.
nHistorically,
they are hard to treat, as they do not seem to be lexically cognate across languages. There is
one intriguing
exception to this, the worldwide word for ‘round, circle, wheel’ which is often k-l- or k-r-
in many language phyla.