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In:Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives
Edited by Kimi Akita and Prashant Pardeshi
[Iconicity in Language and Literature 16] 2019
► pp. 167–198

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Chapter 7
The sensori-semantic clustering of ideophonic meaning in Pastaza Quichua

 | Brigham Young University
Published online: 6 May 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.16.08nuc
I formulate an approach to ideophone semantics which, though based on a corpus from Pastaza Quichua, a South American indigenous language, has potential for analyzing the semantics of ideophone systems more generally. Research on ideophones’ formal properties has preoccupied an increasing number of scholars, while systematic semantic analyses are lagging. Ideophones’ semantics pose challenges because of their intonation and gesture, sound symbolism, and sensory complexity. These qualities require an approach going beyond the traditional mono-sensory classifications, which have dominated ideophones’ semantic descriptions. Using a sensory cluster diagram featuring an implicational logic based on 10 super- and subcategories of sensory experience, this paper analyzes a sample of ideophones drawn from an online corpus featuring 500 archived ideophones.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Unpacking sensory categories
  • 4.Sensori-semantics of Pastaza Quichua ideophones
    • 4.1VISUAL
    • 4.2MOVEMENT
    • 4.3SOUND
  • 5.Low sensory ideophones
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • URL’s for examples
References (60)
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Cited by (12)

Cited by 12 other publications

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McLean, Bonnie & Mark Dingemanse
2025. A multi-methods toolkit for documentary research on ideophones. In Capturing Expressivity, ► pp. 74 ff. DOI logo
Dewey, Dan P., Jeffrey J. Green, Janis Nuckolls, Auna Nygaard & Todd D. Swanson
2024. Neurological evidence for the context-independent multisensorial semantics of ideophones in Pastaza Kichwa: an fNIRS study in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Language and Cognition 16:4 ► pp. 2188 ff. DOI logo
Iida, Hinano & Kimi Akita
2024. Iconicity Emerges From Language Experience: Evidence From Japanese Ideophones and Their English Equivalents. Cognitive Science 48:12 DOI logo
Punselie, Stella, Bonnie McLean & Mark Dingemanse
2024. The Anatomy of Iconicity: Cumulative Structural Analogies Underlie Objective and Subjective Measures of Iconicity. Open Mind 8 ► pp. 1191 ff. DOI logo
Barnes, Kathryn & Cornelia Ebert
2023. The information status of iconic enrichments: modelling gradient at-issueness. Theoretical Linguistics 49:3-4 ► pp. 167 ff. DOI logo
Van Hoey, Thomas, Arthur L. Thompson, Youngah Do & Mark Dingemanse
2023. Iconicity in Ideophones: Guessing, Memorizing, and Reassessing. Cognitive Science 47:4 DOI logo
Akita, Kimi & Keiko Murasugi
2022. Innovative binomial adjectives in Japanese food descriptions and beyond. In The Language of Food in Japanese [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 25], ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo
McLean, Bonnie
2021. Revising an implicational hierarchy for the meanings of ideophones, with special reference to Japonic. Linguistic Typology 25:3 ► pp. 507 ff. DOI logo
Thompson, Arthur Lewis, Thomas Van Hoey & Youngah Do
2021. Articulatory features of phonemes pattern to iconic meanings: evidence from cross-linguistic ideophones. Cognitive Linguistics 32:4 ► pp. 563 ff. DOI logo
Nuckolls, Janis B.
2020. “How do you even know what ideophones mean?”. Gesture 19:2-3 ► pp. 161 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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