Ideophones in Gizey grammar

Journal article

This paper discusses ideophonicity in Gizey (Chadic), viz., the ability of a word to depict sensory experiences. The term “ideophone” is frequently attested in the Gizey literature. While ideophones are classified as a separate word class (part-of-speech), the questions of what they are (phono-semantic characterisation) and how they function (morphosyntactic characterisation) are absent from that literature. Both concerns are addressed in this paper. I first describe the morphophonological, semantic, and syntactic properties of the words classified as “ideophones”. Then, I show that, indeed, Gizey contains several ideophonic words which distribute across different word classes. Thus, ideophones do not form a separate word class in Gizey as previous literature suggests.

Authors: Guitang, G

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: De Gruyter Brill
• Journal: Journal of African Languages and Linguistics
• Volume: 46
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 293-319
• Publication date: 2025-06-27
• Acceptance date: 2025-05-01
• DOI: 10.1515/jall-2024-0025
• EISSN: 1613-3811
• ISSN: 0167-6164
• Language: English
• Keywords: ideophonicity; word class; Gizey; ideophones; iconicity