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The Ideophone

The Ideophone
Sounding out ideas on language, interaction, and iconicity
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Published
Author Mark Dingemanse

I have always had a fondness for things considered marginal in linguistics. The tide may be turning for at least some marginalia: work on ideophones is clearly on the rise, and initiatives such as Martina Wiltschko’s Eh lab at UBC and a new nonlexical vocalizations project at Linköping University show there is significant interest in this area. Part I from my notes on a workshop on ‘Ideophones and non-lexical vocalizations’.

Published
Author Mark Dingemanse

Funeral dirges ( sìnɔ in Siwu) are sung during the period of public mourning preceding a burial. The musical structures of these dirges, the performances, and their place in the larger context of the funeral have been described in some detail by Agawu (1988) and before him by the German missionary Friedrich Kruse (1911); however, the linguistic aspects of the genre have not received any attention so far.