Awngi Ideophones

Abstract

Awngi ideophones are verb-like words that occur uninflected and followed by auxiliary verbs n- or ts͡-,2 which are lexico-semantically dummy transitive and intransitive respectively. Morphologically also, Awngi ideophones are closer to verbals than to other word classes – they undergo similar morphological operation processes with verbs, which is against Tosco’s (2006: 886) observation that Cushitic ideophones “are definitely nominal, rather than verbal”. Semantically, there are two types: coexisting/co-occurring and sole or independent semantic bearers. The former ones coexist with other semantically parallel ordinary verbs having no imagery / sensory effects. The latter do not have semantically parallel ordinary verbs. Symbolically, Awngi ideophones are image or sound symbolic. While image symbolic ideophones are produced with an analogous configuration of (parts of) the mouth, sound symbolic ideophones are onomatopoeic. This paper examines Awngi ideophones on their semantic, prosodic, and syntactic basis.