a journal of Dingemanse, Mark. 2018. Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from general linguistics Glossa research on ideophones. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3(1): 4. 1–30, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.444 OVERVIEW ARTICLE Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones Mark Dingemanse Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 6500 AH Nijmegen, NL [email protected] Ideophones (also known as expressives or mimetics, and including onomatopoeia) have been systematically studied in linguistics since the 1850s, when they were first described as a lexical class of vivid sensory words in West-African languages. This paper surveys the research history of ideophones, from its roots in African linguistics to its fruits in general linguistics and typology around the globe. It shows that despite a recurrent narrative of marginalisation, work on ideophones has made an impact in many areas of linguistics, from theories of phonological features to typologies of manner and motion, and from sound symbolism to sensory language. Due to their hybrid nature as gradient vocal gestures that grow roots in discrete linguistic systems, ideophones provide opportunities to reframe typological questions, reconsider the role of language ideology in linguistic scholarship, and rethink the margins of language. With ideophones increasingly being brought into the fold of the language sciences, this review synthesises past theoretical insights and empirical findings in order to enable future work to build on them. Keywords: ideophones; iconicity; linguistic theory; language ideology “Words go on living despite the efforts of scholars to manage them.” — Taro Gomi (1989) 1 Introduction Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory scenes like c’onc’on ‘woven tightly’, ulakpulak ‘unbalanced, scary appearance’ and colcol ‘flowing liquid’ in Korean, or muku- muku ‘mumbling mouth movements’, gelegele ‘glittery appearance’ and gbadara-gbadara ‘a drunkard’s wobbling gait’ in Siwu, a Kwa language spoken in Ghana (Dingemanse 2012). They have been recognised as a major lexical class in West-African languages for at least 150 years, and equivalent phenomena have since been described in many lan- guages across Asia and the Americas. Their striking forms and colourful meanings have captured the attention of many linguists, anthropologists and cognitive scientists. Their large numbers render them crucial for lexical typologies of property and manner. Their special semiotic and sound-symbolic properties have made them an attractive target for studies of multi-modality, iconicity and sensory language. A common trope in the linguistic literature is that ideophones have not been given the serious, sustained, scholarly attention they deserve. Instead, they have been misunder- stood and marginalised as “a step-child of modern linguistic science” (Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz 2001b: 2). Here I argue that this narrative of marginalisation, though historically justified (Joseph 1997), has outlived its usefulness: it risks obscuring insights from a rich history of research and stands in the way of progress on key questions in linguistics. How does form link to meaning? What are the limits of language? How do subsystems in language relate Art. 4, page 2 of 30 Dingemanse: Redrawing the margins of language to each other? How does language ideology shape linguistic inquiry? Ideophones speak to these and other fundamental questions about linguistic theory and practice. This survey complements reviews that focus on synthesizing current or recent work on ideophones (Dingemanse 2012; Akita 2015; Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2017; Svantesson 2017). It traces empirical discoveries and intellectual lineages that have been influential in shap- ing today’s ideas about ideophones. The goal is to highlight how work on ideophones has led to innovations in linguistic theory and methods, and how it may motivate a redrawing of the margins of language. To this end, it presents a mostly linear narrative, interspersed with overviews of historical terminology (Table 1), iconic associations attested in ideo- phones (Table 2), examples of the impact of ideophones on general linguistics (Table 3), reported magnitudes of ideophone inventories (Table 4), and current questions for which ideophones provide critical evidence (Table 5). The final section summarises some com- mon misconceptions, lessons learned, and challenges provided by ideophones. 1.1 Terms and definitions The words in focus here have not always been known by the same name. Before Doke (1935) introduced the term “ideophone”, now widely adopted, they were discussed under a diverse range of labels (Table 1). Though confusing at times, the proliferation of terms usefully highlights some key aspects of ideophones. Some of the labels characterise seman- tic or pragmatic functions (expressive, descriptive, intensifier). Some foreground morpho- syntactic properties (radical, particle, adverb). Some focus on mode of representation (imitative, Lautbild, picture word). And some labels align ideophones with phenomena familiar to the investigator (onomatopoeia, interjection, Schallwort). Most of the terms in Table 1 come from grammatical descriptions of particular lan- guages, and they reveal a degree of language-specificity. For instance, depending on the language, ideophones may pattern with verbs or with adverbs, or they may form their Table 1: Pre–1930s labels for ideophone-like phenomena. adverbes descriptifs ‘descriptive adverbs’ (Christaller 1888) Bildworter ‘picture words’ (Schuchardt 1919) echoisms (Smith 1920) imitative words (Müller 1861) indeclinable adjectives (Whitehead 1899) indeclinable verbal particles (McLaren 1906) Intensitäts- und Frequenzadverbien ‘intensity and frequency adverbs’ (Schlegel 1857) Klangfiguren ‘sound figures’ (Winkler-Breslau 1907) Lautbilder ‘sound pictures’ (Wundt 1900) mots expressifs ‘expressive words’ (Grammont 1901) onomatopoeia/onomatopoesis (Aston 1894; Urtel 1919) (onomatopoeic) interjections (Wilson 1847) radical descriptives (Doke 1927) Schallnachahmungen ‘sound imitations’ (Leskien 1902) Schallwörter ‘sound words’ (Schuchardt 1919) specific adverbs (Vidal 1852) spezifische Verstärkungsadverbien ‘specific intensifying adverbs’ (Prietze 1908) vocal images (Lévy-Bruhl 1910) Dingemanse: Redrawing the margins of language Art. 4, page 3 of 30 own word class (Childs 1994a), and they may imitate mostly sounds or (more often) a broad range of sensory scenes. Despite such differences, there are enough cross-linguistic similarities to identify a common core that can serve as a basis for cross-linguistic com- parison. This survey adopts a broad definition of ideophones that is designed to capture this core, while leaving room for language-specific differences in implementation: ideo- phones are “marked words that depict sensory imagery” (Dingemanse 2012: 655). Across languages, ideophones tend to be marked, standing out in terms of prosody, phonotactics and morphosyntax. They are words, conventionalised lexical items that are made up of phonemes and are listable and learnable. They depict, using the iconic affordances of speech to present structural analogies to aspects of sensory scenes. And what they depict is sensory imagery, perceptual content that may range from sound to motion, texture, visual appearance, and inner feelings and sensations. While “ideophone” today is the most widely used term for the phenomenon, used not just within Africa but also for languages as varied as Korean, Mandarin, Turkish, Basque, English, Quechua and Navaho (Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz 2001a), two prolific research tradi- tions maintain their own terms for what is typologically essentially the same phenomenon (with expected area-specific nuances): “mimetics” in Japanese linguistics (Iwasaki, Sells & Akita 2017) and “expressives” in Southeast Asian linguistics (Williams 2013). The term “onomatopoeia” is usually understood to be limited to words imitative of sound (Moore 2015), and therefore forms a proper subset of “ideophones”. 1.2 Marginality and commonality What does it mean to be marginal? In discussing the margins of language, it is useful to make a distinction between rara and marginalia. “Rara are typologically exceptional phenomenona that illuminate the fringes of linguistic diversity. […] Marginalia are typologically unexceptional phenomena that many linguists think can be ignored without harm to linguistic inquiry. They are not rare, but linguistic practice assigns them to the margins by consensus. Whereas rara can be objectively described as exceptional, margi- nalia are viewpoint-dependent” (Dingemanse 2017: 195–6). Until recently, ideophones have been treated as marginal in this subjective sense. In many languages, ideophones are a major lexical class on a par with nouns and verbs, counting hundreds to thousands of lexical items (Samarin 1970b; and see Table 4 below). Yet in most grammatical descrip- tions, they appear as stowaways in minor chapters on interjections and other marginalia, if they appear at all. The marginal representation of ideophones in descriptive grammars reinforces the idea that they have no linguistic properties worth describing — a neat example of a self-perpetuating myth. As long as grammars can have blind spots the size of a major lexical class, we have not found the proper way to model the grammar of lexical- ised depictions like ideophones. To neutralise the narrative of marginalisation we must briefly consider its origins. It springs from two common ways of making