Toward a Definition of the Ideophone in Bantu

Bantu ideophones are comparable to those in English, such as 'The stone went: kerplop!, into the pool.' They are often introduced with a pause. The perceived qualities of events & objects are described vividly & eloquently by ideophones. They are not conducive to negation & question formation, have free phonotactic construction, & lack inflection. It is never inappropriate to use items from the verb, noun, infinitive, etc. categories; in English, however, ideophones are usually restricted to baby talk, kid's stories, & casual speech. Ideophones are here defined as 'a class of lexical items in which semantic representations of perceptual qualities are mapped directly onto phonological strings, without passing through the morphological component of the grammar.' This definition would exclude the verb form, as in 'The stone kerplopped into the pool,' as well as any other standard grammatical forms, thus keeping the definition of ideophones in their own separate category -- avoiding much confusion & elaboration. Several carefully diagrammed grammatical arguments are presented. M. Ambler