Course:LING447/2014WT1/Syllabus
Course description
Ideophones are words that provide “a vivid representation of an idea” (Doke 1935), and are most often based on sensory events (e.g. touch, smell, sight, hearing, taste). Other terms used to describe ideophones include "sound symbolism” or “onomatopoeia”. This research seminar explores the formal properties of ideophones in terms of how they are integrated into the grammar of a language.
Issues to be investigated include:
- Inventory: What determines whether a language has a large ideophonic vocabulary (e.g. Japanese, Shona), or a relatively small one (e.g. English, French)?
- Phonological integration: What are the phonological properties of ideophones? Ideophones typically use the same features as the regular phonology, but deploy them in a gradient fashion. For example, voicing might be contrastive in the regular phonology, but in the ideophonic phonology it is gradient with voicing associated with the top end of the scale (relative to size or intensity) and voicelessness associated with the bottom end of the scale.
- Morphological integration: What is the status of ideophones as a word class? In some languages, ideophones seem to be a distinct category, but in other languages they are part of the regular word-class system. In addition, ideophones sometimes participate in both derivational and inflectional processes.
- Syntactic integration: What is the syntactic distribution of ideophones? Ideophones function as predicate modifiers in some languages, and in other languages they can be the main predicate. Also, ideophones are sometimes incompatible with certain syntactic contexts; e.g. in some languages, they don’t appear with negation or in questions.
- Semantic integration: How are ideophonic meanings composed? The semantics of ideophones is based on the compositional combinatorics of several phonological properties, including segmental melody (consonantal, vocalic), supra-segmental melody (pitch, intensity, duration), as well as higher units of organization (mora, syllable, metrical foot). Ideophonic forms differ in how they use these phonological properties to compose meaning.
- Pragmatic integration: Ideophones have the hallmark properties of expressives: they are performative, they present the speaker’s perspective, and they contribute not-at-issue content. Their context-of-use is very similar to evidentials, and indeed, in many languages ideophones are introduced by quotative evidential marking.
- Perceptual integration: Ideophones most often describe percepts, and can be viewed as a special case of synaesthesia, where stimulation in one sensory pathway (e.g. taste, vision, smell, touch) is experienced in a secondary pathway (sound). As such, the formal properties of ideophones provide a window into the linguistic and cognitive basis of synaesthesia.
Goals
- Develop and test analyses of ideophones.
- Develop a formal typology for ideophones: What is the range of variation? Are there limits to this variation?
- Test (and refine) different frameworks for analysis.
Course requirements
| Activity | Weight |
|---|---|
| Participation and "low stakes" writing | 20% |
| Annotated bibliography and database | 20% |
| Discussion leading | 20% |
| Collaborative paper | 40% |
Course Schedule
Unless otherwise indicated, course meets 5.00-6.30pm, SSW 386.
| Date | Topic | Activity | Leader(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tu 02 Sept | — | Imagine Day (no class) | — |
| Th 04 Sept | Why (not) study ideophones? | — | R.-M. Déchaine |
| Tu 09 Sept | Where do ideophone fit in? | Dingemanse 2012 | R.-M. Déchaine |
| Th 11 Sept | Literature survey | 1. Samarin 2001; 2. Maduka-Durunze 2001 | 1. Leighanne; 2. Noriko, Christina |
| Tu 16 Sept | Literature survey | 3. Creissels 2001; 4. Ameka 2001 | 3. Iris; 4. Virginia |
| Th 18 Sept | Literature survey | 5. Amha 2001 | Enrico |
| Tu 23 Sept | Literature survey | 6. Klamer 2001; 7. Kunene | 6. Christina; 7. Leighanne |
| Th 25 Sept | Literature survey; Intro to Shona OLD | 8. Nuckolls | Masaki, Kevin |
| Mon 29 Sept, 7.00-8.30pm TFS | Intro. to Shona Ideophones | 9. TBA | C. Mudzingwa |
| Th 02 Oct | Literature survey | 10. Kilian-Hatz; 11. Déchaine & Muzingwa 2014 | 10. Kevin, Virginia; 11. R.-M. Déchaine |
| Mon 06 Oct, 6.30-8.00pm TFS | WOCAL 8 abstract | TBA | R.-M. Déchaine, C. Mudzingwa |
| Th 09 Oct | Shona Online Linguistic Database (OLD) | TBA | R.-M. Déchaine |
| Fri 10 Oct | Submit annotated bibliography | — | — |
| Tu 14 Oct | Déchaine & Mudzingwa (cont'd); WOCAL 8 abs (cont'd) | TBA | R.-M. Déchaine |
| Th 16 Oct | Data 1-2 : Lexicon | TBA | 1. Christina; 2. Allyssa |
| Mon 20 Oct, 6.30-8.00pm TFS | Shona data capture | TBA | TBA |
| Th 23 Oct | Data 3 Perception; Data 4: Phonology | TBA | 3. Enrico; 4. Noriko, Masaki |
| Tu 28 Oct | Data 5: Morpho-syntax; Data 6: Semantics | TBA | 5. Leighanne; 6. Kevin, Virginia |
| Th 30 Oct | Submit literature review | — | — |
| Fri 31 Oct, 3.00-4.30pm Buch B216 | Shona data | TBA | C. Mudzingwa |
| Tu 04 Nov | Data 7: Pragmatics + Shona OLD (database workshop) | TBA | R.-M. Déchaine |
| Fri 07 Nov, 3.00-4.30pm Buch B216 | Shona data | TBA | C. Mudzingwa |
| Mon 10 Nov | Submit database collection | — | — |
| Tu 11 Nov | Remembrance Day; UBC closes | — | — |
| Th 13 Nov | Generalizations | TBA | R.-M. Déchaine & C. Mudzingwa |
| Fri 14 Nov, 3.00-4.30pm Buch B216 | Shona data | TBA | C. Mudzingwa |
| Tu 18 Nov | Collaborative Writing | TBA | Everyone |
| Fri 21 Nov, 3.00-4.30pm Buch B216 | Collaborative Writing | TBA | Everyone |
| Tu 25 Nov | Collaborative Writing | TBA | Everyone |
| Fri 28 Nov, 3.00-4.30pm Buch B216 | Collaborative Writing | TBA | Everyone |
| Mon 15 Dec | Collaborative Paper Due | — | Everyone |