IDEOPHONES in africa
n A great deal less is known about Nilo-Saharan and Afroasiatic although Chadic languages are clearly as rich as their Niger-Congo neighbours
nAlthough it
is not entirely clear, dictionaries suggest that Afroasiatic and Khoesan are less replete with ideophones and that it is interaction
with Nilo-Saharan
and Niger-Congo that increases their repertoire
n This is curious since there is no
evidence of direct
lexical borrowing; therefore it is essentially borrowing of ideas about expressivity