Ph.D. / Please refer to full text to view abstract.

M.A. / The study of the ideophone as a linguistic phenomenon has, with regard to the Nguni group of languages, received considerable attention to date. Concerning Southern Sotho, however, the handling of this word category has been rudimentary. Comprising the highlighting of a few aspects at a tine only. The role the ideophone plays as a stylistic phenomenon has not yet been thoroughly investigated. This situation prompted a more thorough investigation into the dualistic function of the ideophone in Southern Sotho ...

This thesis talks about the structure of ideophones in Southern Sinitic. Ideophone is an interesting word class that has been studies in a world atlas, while the Sinitic is just like an enclave under the context. This thesis is a try on analyzing the “state adjectives” and the onomatopoeia Chinese linguistics used to call from the ideophonic perspective. Treating Ruihong (a sub-dialect of Gan) as an entry point, structural markedness of ideophones in Southern Sinitic is described in a formal-functional way. At last, some typological attributes of the Sinitic ideophones have been summarized. Chapter 5 to Chapter 9 is the part of descriptive introduction. Each chapter picks one or several relevant forms of ideophones, and then start analysis about their structural markedness. Each Chapter has its emphasis: Chapter 5 focuses on how to identifying an ideophone from its phonotactic distribution, lack of written form, flexible word class and sound symbolism; Chapter 6 is about the most important XA ideophones in Ruihong, descriptions on characteristics like high tone and checked tone’s wide usage, disappearance of nasal coda after syllable final stop, grammaticalization and deideophonization, etc. are elaborated. Chapter 7 is about two reduplicative forms XX and AXX, comparison on the usage of XA and AXX between Gan, Xiang and other southern Sinitic is this chapter’s focus. Chapter 8 is mainly about prosodic features of the onomatopoeia and the mimicking words. Chapter 9 tries to connect the form and the semantic function, using AABB and AliXY and infix “pat” as examples, a detailed description about how these forms connect with meanings has been given. At last, in the conclusion, summary about the common points and differences in Southern Sinitic are listed. Basically, in the phonetic and phonological part, there are more common points, while in the morpho-syntactic part, differentiation is more apparent. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

archives@tulane.edu / 1 / Yitong Du

Thesis (M.A. (Translation Studies and Linguistics)) --University of Limpopo, 2009 / This mini-research dissertation discusses the morphosemantic properties of the ideophone in Xitsonga.The ideophone is also analysed in terms of the Theta theory as proposed in the Government and Binding Theory.It is illustrated in this research paper that the ideophone can broadly be catagorised into the non-derived and the derived ideophone.It is furthermore demonstrated that it is possible for the ideophone in Xitsonga to be seen as a predicate that assigns various Theta roles to its external subject and internal complement arguement NPs in the subject and object Theta positions of linguistic expressions.It is held that whereas the predicate Theta-marks its external subject arguement NP indirectly,it assigns the Theta roles to its complement arguement NPs directly

Thesis (M. A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2002 / Refer to the document

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2002 / Refer to document

Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit dem großen Oberthema der Ikonizität und ihrer Verbreitung auf verschiedenen linguistischen Ebenen. Ikonizität bezeichnet die Ähnlichkeit zwischen der sprachlichen Form und ihrer Bedeutung (vgl. Perniss und Vigliocco, 2014). So wie eine Skulptur einem Objekt oder einer Person ähnelt, kann auch der Klang oder die Form von Wörtern der Sache ähneln, auf die sie verweisen. Frühere theoretische Ansätze betonen, dass die Arbitrarität von sprachlichen Zeichen und deren Bedeutung ein Hauptmerkmal menschlicher Sprache ist und Ikonizität für die Sprachevolution eine Rolle gespielt haben mag, jedoch in der heutigen Sprache zu vernachlässigen ist. Im Gegensatz dazu ist das Hauptanliegen dieser Arbeit, das Potenzial und die Bedeutung von Ikonizität in der heutigen Sprache zu untersuchen. Die einzelnen Kapitel der Dissertation können als separate Teile betrachtet werden, die in ihrer Gesamtheit das umfassende Spektrum der Ikonizität sichtbar machen. Von der sprachevolutionären Debatte ausgehend wird in den einzelnen Kapiteln auf die unterschiedlichen Ebenen der Ikonizität eingegangen. Es werden experimentelle Untersuchungen zur Lautsymbolik, am Beispiel der deutschen Pokémon-Namen, zur ikonischen Prosodie und zu ikonischen Wörtern, den sogenannten Ideophonen, vorgestellt. Die Ergebnisse der einzelnen Untersuchungen deuten auf die weite Verbreitung der Ikonizität im heutigen Deutsch hin. Darüber hinaus entschlüsselt diese Dissertation das kommunikative Potenzial der Ikonizität als eine Kraft, die nicht nur die Entstehung der Sprache ermöglichte, sondern auch nach Jahrtausenden bestehen bleibt, sich immer wieder neu entfaltet und uns tagtäglich in mündlicher, schriftlicher Form und in Gesten begegnet. / This dissertation is concerned with the major theme of iconicity and its prevalence on different linguistic levels. Iconicity refers to a resemblance between the linguistic form and the meaning of a referent (cf. Perniss and Vigliocco, 2014). Just like a sculpture resembles an object or a model, so can the sound or shape of words resemble the thing they refer to. Previous theoretical approaches emphasize that arbitrariness of the linguistic sign is one of the main features of human language; iconicity, however, may have played a role for language evolution, but is negligible in contemporary language. In contrast, the main point of this thesis is to explore the potential and the importance of iconicity in the language nowadays. The individual chapters of the dissertation can be viewed as separate parts that, taken together, reveal the comprehensive spectrum of iconicity. Starting from the language evolutionary debate, the individual chapters address iconicity on different linguistic levels. I present experimental evidence on sound symbolism, using the example of German Pokémon names, on iconic prosody, and on iconic words, the so-called ideophones. The results of the individual investigations point to the widespread use of iconicity in contemporary German. Moreover, this dissertation deciphers the communicative potential of iconicity as a force that not only enabled the emergence of language, but also persists after millennia, unfolding again and again and encountering us every day in speech, writing, and gestures.