On the Status of DO/SAY Verbs with Emai Ideophones

This article evaluates the propensity for ideophones to occur in grammaticalized syntactic frames linked to verbs meaning 'say' or 'do'. Data from the Edoid language Emai of southern Nigeria only indirectly confirms this hypothesis. Ideophones appear in copular frames with BE and HEAR. The latter reveals no relation to SAY, although its exclusive reliance on second-person subjects indexes speaker-driven subjectivization as well as frame specialization. The BE frame derives via a two-stage grammaticalization process from an intransitive DO SO verb, not transitive DO. Stage one (DO SO > BE) consists of a change in verb properties from dynamic to stative, constrained by frame intransitivity. Stage two (BE+adjective > BE+ideophone) reflects frame specialization.