Ideophones in Sidaama Documentation and Description
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Date
2013-05
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Addis Ababa Universiy
Abstract
This study deals with ideophones in Sidaama. The Sidaama ideophones are unique
from the other word categories in the language. They are expressive of sound
symb'olism in that they manifest systematic relations with meanings. They exhibit
features that. are less common in the other word classes of the language. Some
ideophones display nasalization expressed via nasalized vowels. Ideophones in Sidaama
are expressed in limited morphophonemic patterns. They have their own rules such as
vowel harmony and sound alteration. They are commonly disyllabic and exhibit extralong
syllables. Furthermore, total reduplication is highly productive in ideophones.
Unlike the other open class words in Sidaama, ideophones take little inflectional
affixes. However, other open-class words can be derived from them by means of
affixation, compounding and reduplication. Ideophones are syntactically associated
with the auxiliary verbs / 7ass-/ 'do' and / j-/ 'say' and occur in a focused position in a
sentence which is preverbal. Sidaama ideophones have specific, expressive and
emphatic meanings. Given aforesaid unique characteristics, Sidaama ideophones seem
to constitute their own independent open word class
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Documentation and Description