A word, often onomatopoeic, which describes a predicate, qualificative or adverb in respect to manner, color, sound, smell, action, state or intensity. Īn often-cited definition of the notion of ideophone is the following by Clement Martyn Doke Ī vivid representation of an idea in sound. In the discipline of linguistics, ideophones have long been overlooked or treated as mysterious words, though a recent surge of interest in sound symbolism, iconicity and linguistic diversity has brought them renewed attention.
The word class of ideophones is sometimes called phonosemantic to indicate that it is not a grammatical word class in the traditional sense of the word (like verb or noun), but rather a lexical class based on the special relation between form and meaning exhibited by ideophones. In many languages, they are a major lexical class of the same order of magnitude as nouns and verbs: dictionaries of languages like Japanese, Korean, Xhosa and Zulu list thousands of them. Ideophones are found in many of the world's languages, though they are claimed to be relatively uncommon in Western languages. sound ( onomatopoeia), movement, color, shape, or action. Ideophones are words that evoke an idea in sound, often a vivid impression of certain sensations or sensory perceptions, e.g. An example of Japanese sound symbolism, ' jaan!'
