| Summary: | The aim of this study was firstly to summarise what research
has already been done on the ideophone in literature,
especially in Tswana literature. Secondly, an important aim
was to establish what the morphological. syntactic, semantic
and phonological properties are of the ideophone in Tswana.
Divergent viewpoints have been expressed with regard to the
nature of the ideophone in literature, because the phenomenon
has been considered on the grounds of various linguistic
approaches.
In order to highlight this. one chapter has been devoted to
this diversity of approach and point of view. and a suitable
model. namely that of a structural linguistic study. was
decided on. The qualities of the ideophone in Tswana were
scrutinized within the framework of this model.
Certain morphological properties were deduced on the basis of
the paradigmatic and syntagmatic analyses. Ideophones reveal a
number of morphemes which occur in a suffixed position. namely
the ideophonicating, reduplicating and intensifying morphemes.
The majority of ideophones seem to be formed from their related
verb stems. Non-derivative ideophones show that they have not
been derived from any related word form. Most derived
ideophones. viz. deverbative ideophones. can be traced back to
their verb stems, while a smaller number of de-adjective
ideophones. are also formed from related ideophones.
Morphologically, it has been established that the ideophone
functions as an ideophonically descriptive term in the verb
group containing re as the verb.
Syntactically. ideophones have a dual word class status as a
result of their valent qualities. Therefore. they may have a
predicative or descriptive nature. Because of this duality.
they may exhibit descriptive (adverbial) qualities in the
context of verb and auxiliary verb groups, as well as
predicative properties if they are used by themselves as a
complete sentence or without the suggested verb s.
Predicative ideophones may be transitive or intransitive, and
can incorporate both a subject and an object morpheme.
Semantically. ideophones have an explicating and an
intensifying function. Synonyms. antonyms. homonyms. identical
pairs of ideophones. metaphors, polysemy and figurative
language were frequently found in the corpus of ideophones.
Paradigmatically, the ideophonic morpheme imparts a semantic
value of intensity to ideophones. while a doubling morpheme
creates the semantic aspect of motion. intensity and
suddenness. Syntagmatically it was determined that if the verb
does not appear in a sentence. the ideophone acquires a
greater semantic prominence.
Ideophones are characterized phonologically by the doubling of
both consonants and vowels. Phonologically. too, ideophones
have an exaggerated variation of tone, i.e. both an abnormally
high or low tone, with a falling and rising intonation. The
tone of the ideophone is not affected by its position in the
sentence. but does differ from one speaker to the next.
The general conclusion drawn from this study is that the
ideophone in Tswana has a dual word class status. because it
displays both adverbial and verbal qualities. === Thesis (MA)--PU for CHE, 1992.
|
|---|
