Mwaghavul expressives

Abstract

One of the most distinctive features of African languages are the abundance of ideophones, words that describe sensory experiences. The first clear reference to a class of ideophones in African languages was in the mid nineteenth century, where they are touched on in Vidal's preface to the Yoruba Dictionary of Crowther (1852). Vidal describes ideophones as a "peculiar and appropriate adverb which denotes the degree or quality attaching to it" and mistakenly claims they are unique to Yoruba. Koelle (1854) noted the presence of these "peculiar adverbs" in Kanuri, perhaps the first documentation for a non-Niger-Congo language.