10.1 Basque and its ideophone repertoire: A brief history
Basque is an isolate language in southwestern Europe.Footnote 1 It is currently spoken by around 900,000 speakers distributed across both sides of the western edge of the Pyrenees. Apart from a very rich dialectal variation (see Zuazo Reference Zuazo2013, Camino Reference Camino2019) and an unknown phylogenetic origin (see Trask Reference Trask1997, Martínez Areta Reference Martínez Areta2013, Gorrochategui et al. Reference Gorrochategui, Igartua and Lakarra2018), Basque is an often-cited and well-known language among language scientists due to some of its distinctive linguistic characteristics; namely, its ergativity, case alignment, and double marking (see, Igartua Reference Igartua, Santazilia, Krajewska, Zuloaga and Ariztimuño2020 for a review).
Another distinctive feature of the Basque language is its rich ideophone repertoire. Current dictionaries of Basque ideophones (Ibarretxe-Antuñano Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano2006, Santisteban Reference Santisteban2007) have compiled more than 4,000 ideophonic entries, which is just an estimate of the real size of such a repertoire, since Basque speakers, as happens with other ideophonic speakers, create ideophones on the spot depending on their needs (e.g., tita-tita for typing, tak tak tak for computer typing). The large repertoire of ideophones bestows on Basque its categorisation as a highly-ideophonic language. This fact serves as a good case in point to refute the general claim for the limited distribution of this type of words to languages in Asia, Africa, and the Americas (see Dingemanse Reference Dingemanse and van Lier2022) as well as to vindicate ideophones as an important typological trait of Basque, on the same level as its other morphosyntactic typological characteristics.
The lack of visibility of ideophones in these two contexts may be partly explained if one considers the little interest that these linguistic items have attracted in typological studies in general, and in Basque linguistics in particular. This neglect is nevertheless natural since, until very recently, ideophones were hardly explored in these cross-linguistic general linguistics contexts. This situation has been gradually reversed since the late 1990s due, among other factors, to the publication of several key books that include descriptive research on ideophones from all over the world (see, for example, Hinton et al. Reference Hinton, Nichols and Ohala1994, Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz Reference Voeltz and Kilian-Hatz2001, Akita & Pardeschi Reference Akita and Pardeshi2019). In Basque linguistics, the study of ideophones shares a similar path. After a shiny period at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the key role of ideophones (usually called onomatopoeia) appeared in traditional descriptive Basque studies, these linguistic elements fell into oblivion in dominant linguistic approaches to Basque linguistics until the end of the century. At present, ideophones are enjoying a timid renaissance in Basque linguistics (see Ibarretxe-Antuñano Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano2017: 198–9 for an overview). This chapter aims at contributing to this ‘ideophonic renaissance’ by bringing to the fore the singularity of this special word class in Basque. Section 10.2 briefly explains the concept of ideophone from a typological perspective and illustrates what these words feel like in Basque by means of the ideophone mara-mara. In the rest of the chapter, §10.3 is devoted to the exploration of the multimodal structure, §10.4 the meaning, and §10.5 the use of Basque ideophones.
10.2 Ideophones in general and ideophones in Basque
Ideophones are marked linguistic elements due to their foregrounded structural characteristics and their compact and multifaceted depictive meaning (Dingemanse Reference Dingemanse2012, Ibarretxe-Antuñano Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano2017, Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Akita and Pardeshi2019, Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano2022a, Akita & Dingemanse Reference Akita, Dingemanse and Aronoff2019). In other words, ideophones display salient linguistic characteristics that distinguish them from other word categories in their respective languages. What counts as ‘linguistically salient’ depends on each language, but usually among these prominent features one may find unusual phonotactics; specific phonemes, morphemes, and word orders; reduplication; syntactic looseness; multi-categorial properties; gestural patterns; inter alia. In addition, at the same time, ideophones provide a vividly expressive and precise depiction of the entity or event they refer to. That is, they descriptively inform about the entity or event, as well as depictively enact that information. This is why ideophones fulfil representative in addition to expressive and aesthetic functions.
Basque ideophones fit into this general typological characterisation. Table 10.1 shows a speaker describing a typical Basque ideophone: mara-mara. Formally, this ideophone exhibits a total reduplication of a two-syllable morph with a nasal bilabial consonant in initial position, a second-syllable stress pattern together with an iconic gesture. As far as its meaning is concerned, mara-mara refers to a downward, soft, continuous movement of small light objects. Mara-mara, when used in a literal sense, usually refers to snow as in Table 10.1; when used metaphorically, mara-mara highlights the ‘gentleness’, ‘softness’, and ‘abundance’ character of the event described.
Table 10.1 The ideophone mara-mara
mara-mara https://osf.io/gk9ev | Oral text Mara-mara eztau inoiz eitten eurik, mara-mara eiten deu beti elurrek eta da ba, luman modure, xuabe xuabe berantza datorrelako. Mara-mara eiteko, elurre ixan behar dau, ez dau balio txotorrak edo ez dau balio harrik edo ez dau … beste elurre mota batzuk ez dute mara-mara eitten; mara-mara dator elur, elur-lumaka beratuten direnen, es mara-mara English (semi-literal) translation ‘Rain never makes mara-mara, it is snow that always makes mara-mara and it is, well, similar to feathers, because it comes softly softly downwards. In order to make mara-mara it has to be snow, hail is not possible or hailstone is not possible or no …, any other type of snowfall does not make mara-mara; mara-mara comes, when snow, em, snowflakes descend, it is mara-mara.’ |
The ideophone mara-mara in Table 10.1 is a good illustrative example of how ideophones work in Basque. The following sections provide a succinct typological characterisation of these words in Basque from three viewpoints: their multimodal structure, their meaning, and their use.
10.3 The multimodal structure of Basque ideophones
The structure of Basque ideophones shares some of the key typological features that are generally used in characterising these words from a cross-linguistic perspective. This section offers a description of the phonological, morphosyntactic, and gestural structure of Basque ideophones.
10.3.1 Mimetic vowel harmony
This process refers to the repetition of the same vowel sound (Akita et al. Reference Akita, Imai, Saji, Kantartzis and Kita2013) and it is frequently found in ideophones as illustrated in (1a). Disharmony or vowel alternation is also typical. The i-a vowel alternation is the most frequent pattern, followed by the i-o pattern as exemplified in (1b):
(1)
a. Plasta-plasta ‘crashing down’, tetele-metele ‘without thinking’, pil-pil ‘simmer; snowflake; palpitation’, bro-bro ‘boil hard’, zurrumurru ‘gossip; whisper’ b. Plisti-plasta ‘wade’, zirt-zart ‘slashing; crackling; shine’, binbili-bonbolo ‘gently; rocking’
10.3.2 Palatalisation
This phonetic process is a general feature of the Basque language (Michelena Reference Michelena1985: ch. 10, Hualde & Ortiz de Urbina Reference Hualde and Ortiz de Urbina2003, 37–40, de Rijk Reference De Rijk2008: 13–15). Conditioned or automatic palatalisation occurs in contexts where the vowel /i/ precedes /n/, /l/, and /t/ as in baina /´baɲa/. This palatalisation shows a great deal of dialectal variation in both usage and distribution. Western dialects are known for their palatalisation preference. Affective and expressive palatalisation, on the other hand, is a general widespread productive mechanism to create diminutives, augmentatives, and affective words with a positive or negative valence (e.g. gozo ‘sweet’ and goxo ‘very sweet, pleasant, lovely’).
In the case of ideophones, palatalisation is also used with expressive purposes. That is to say, when the meaning of the ideophone needs to be intensified. For instance, tipi-tapa means ‘to walk in small and quick steps’. Its palatalised form, ttipi-ttipa, keeps the same meaning but adds an extra degree of smallness and quickness to these steps. All ideophones whose phonetic structure admits palatalisation may undergo this process for expressive purposes. This palatalisation is reflected in the orthography in writing.Footnote 2 Example (2) presents some illustrative cases.
(2)
a. Voiceless apico-dental stop /t/ t → voiceless predorsal palatal stop /c/ tt Ter-ter ‘little by little; disorderly way’ → tter-tter ‘small steps’ b. Voiced apico-dental stop /d/ d → voiced predorsal palatal stop /ɟ/ dd Dalan-dalan ‘completely full’ → ddalanddal ‘even more completely full’ c. Voiceless lamino-alveolar fricative /s̻/ z → voiceless palato-alveolar fricative /ʃ/ x Zafla ‘slice’ → xafla ‘poultice, plaster; slice’ d. Voiceless apico-alveolar fricative /s̺/ s → voiceless palato-alveolar fricative /ʃ/ x Brist ‘sudden and quick movement’ → brixt ‘sudden disappearance’ e. Apico-alveolar lateral /l/ l → palato-alveolar /ʎ/ ll Lapa-lapa ‘lick’ → llapa-llapa ‘slurp down’ f. Apico-alveolar nasal /n/ n → palato-alveolar nasal /ɲ/ ñ Nirro ‘half-closed eye person’ → ñirro (ñirro-ñarro) ‘short-sighted’
Palatalisation also occurs in other sets of ideophones whose meaning is not necessarily loaded with an extra charge of expressivity. This is the case with ttakun-ttakun ‘the sound of the Basque instrument txalaparta’ or ñir-ñir ‘gleam, twinkling’.
10.3.3 Unusual phonology
This refers to cases where some sounds, sound clusters or sound phonotactic environments are exclusive (or frequent) to ideophones. In Basque, a distinctive sound that usually only occurs in ideophonic words is the voiced lamino-alveolar affricate /dz/ dz. Another example is the diphthong /iṷ/, usually absent in prosaic words but present in some ideophones such as briu-brau ‘energetically and quickly’. The appearance of some sounds and sound clusters in specific phonotactic positions is also recurrent in ideophones. This is the case of affricates (/ts̻-/ tz-, /tʃ-/ tx-) and palatals (/c-/ tt-, /ɲ-/ ñ-, /ʃ-/ x-) in word-initial positions (Hualde Reference Hualde1991: 12). Similarly, the word-initial position of sounds such as plosives, the voiceless labio-dental fricative, the voiceless laminal alveolar fricative and nasals is also typical of these words. These sounds are frequent in other positions in Basque, but their word-initial position is a clear sign of either an ideophone or non-native words and recent loanwords. In addition, consonant clusters formed by plosives or /f/ f plus liquids in word-initial and word-final positions are also a give-away for ideophones (Trask Reference Trask1997: 258). Tables 10.2 and 10.3 summarise these phonological characteristics together with illustrative examples.
| Phonemes and clusters | Example | |
|---|---|---|
| Affricates | Voiced lamino-alveolar /dz-/ dz- | dzist-dzast ‘poke repeatedly; work carelessly’ |
| Voiceless palato-alveolar /tʃ-/ tx- | txir-txir ‘fry; creak; chatter’ | |
| Voiceless lamino-alveolar /ts̻-/ tz- | tzillo-tzallo ‘shuffle’ | |
| Stops (/p-/ p-, /t-/ t-, /k-/ k-, /b-/ b-, /d-/ d-, /ɡ-/ g-) | pilpil-pulpul ‘palpitation’ giri-giri ‘dive, swim’ | |
| Diphthongs | briu-brau ‘energetically and quickly’ | |
| Fricatives | Voiceless labiodental /f-/ f- | furrust-farrast ‘roaring’ |
| Voiceless prepalatal sibilant /ʃ-/ x- | xixta-mixta ‘lighting’ | |
| Voiceless lamino-alveolar sibilant /s̻/ z- | zipirti-zaparta ‘left, right, and centre’ zurrust ‘swallow, gulp’ | |
| Nasals (/m-/ m-, /n-/ n-, /ɲ-/ ñ-) | mela-mela ‘completely soaked’ nistiki-nastaka ‘hodgepodge, jumble’ | |
Table 10.3 Consonant clusters in Basque ideophones
| Position | Consonant cluster | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Onset | Stop + liquid | blai-blai ‘soaked’ gran-gran ‘train clattering’ |
| /f-/ f- + liquid | fliu-flau ‘quickly and energetically’ | |
| Coda | Liquid/sibilant/nasal + stop | zart ‘snap; crack’ tenk ‘steady; tense, taut; come to a stop’ laprast ‘slip, slide’ |
10.3.4 Syllabic structure
The number of syllables in Basque ideophones is varied. The great majority of ideophones are one-, two-, and three-syllable, but four- and even five-syllable items are also possible as illustrated in (3). Stress varies across dialectal varieties. It is fixed on the penultimate syllable in Souletin. For most of the other dialects, it is first syllable in monosyllabic stems (zárt ‘slap’ → zárta ‘a slap’) and in vowel-final disyllabic (záfla ‘slice’). In other cases, it follows a second-syllable stress pattern (irríst ‘slide, slid’) and, when reduplicated, it falls on the first morph as shown in Figure 10.1.
(3)
a. Di-da ‘beat; proceed’, zart ‘snap, break; slap, hit; suddenly’ b. Mara-mara ‘softly, gently’, irrist ‘slide, slid’, zart ‘slap’ c. Zingulu-zangulu ‘shuffle’ d. Hirrinbili-harranbala ‘move awkwardly; clumsy’ e. Tibiribiri-tibiribiro ‘chattering away’
10.3.5 Reduplication
This morphological process is one of the ubiquitous characteristics of ideophones across languages. Reduplication refers to the repetition of phonological material within a word for semantic or grammatical purposes (Rubino Reference Rubino, Dryer and Haspelmath2011). When the repetition of a single morph takes place in its total form, it is called total reduplication; partial reduplication, on the other hand, refers to the partial repetition of a single form and it comes in a wide array of forms (vowel lengthening, consonant gemination, consonant insertion, and so on). Reduplication, both total and partial, is a pervasive process in Basque. It is commonly used with a distributive meaning (egunean-egunean ‘each day’), quantifier meaning (handi-handia ‘very big’) as well as an expressive meaning (saski-naski ‘mess, jumble, mixup’) (Hualde Reference Hualde, Hualde and Ortiz de Urbina2003).
Both total and partial reduplication are common in Basque ideophones as illustrated in (4a) and (4b), respectively.
(4)
a. Total reduplication CCVC1CV2 – CCVC1CV2: plasta-plasta ‘crashing down’ CV1CV2 – CV1CV2: kili-kili ‘tickle’ CVC1CV2 – CVC1CV2: gurka-gurka ‘in gulps’ b. Partial reduplication CiC1Ci2Ci3 – CaC1Ca2Ca3: pinpili-panpala ‘favourite’ Ci1CiC2 – Co1CaC2: bilin-bolan ‘tumbling, toppling, turning over’ CVC1CV2CVC3 – mVC1CV2CVC3: zirkurin-mirkurin ‘complaint, moan’ V1CV2 / mV1CV2: irrimirri ‘weak’ Ci1Ci2Ci3 – pa1Ca2Ca3: txitxili-patxala ‘complaint, moan’
As shown in (4b), in the case of partial reduplication, the second morph undergoes different types of processes: vowel alternation (see §10.3.1), consonant alternation, consonant insertion, and all of these processes at the same time. In consonant insertion cases, the most frequent pattern is the inclusion of a bilabial nasal /m-/ m- (see Igartua Reference Igartua2013).
Repetition of morphs in Basque ideophones is not restricted to duplicated forms. Basque ideophones allow the multiplication of forms for iconic expressive functions: the higher number of repetitions, the more intensive the meaning. For instance, pla means ‘one slap’, pla-pla ‘two slaps’, but pla-pla-pla ‘continuous slapping’. There are, however, other ideophones where the number of repetitions is lexicalised as in ter-ter-ter ‘in line; one after the other’, dra-dra-dra ‘monotonous speech’, and fil-fil-fil ‘fall down in circles and slowly’.
10.3.6 Open lexical word class
One of those much-debated questions in ideophone literature has been the word class status of ideophones. Some authors have argued for a distinctive and separate word class (e.g., Doke Reference Doke1935, Awoyale Reference Awoyale1989, Kabuta Reference Kabuta, Voeltz and Kilian-Hatz2001), whereas others have distributed ideophones across traditional categories (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.) since they fit their core definitional functional properties (Amha Reference Amha, Voeltz and Kilian-Hatz2001, de Jong Reference De Jong, Voeltz and Kilian-Hatz2001).
In Basque, as the ideophone marmar illustrates in (5),Footnote 3 ideophones may be said to form a distinctive lexical word class of their own. They are used as bare elements, that is, they do not take any explicit morphological marking, and their syntactic function is only revealed once they are put into context (see Exx. (5a) and (5b)). That is to say, some ideophones are multi-categorial. However, on the other hand, some of these ideophones may also be found in compound formations by means of support verbs such as egin ‘do, make’ (Ex. (5c)) or derived by means of different morphemes such as the deadverbial suffix -ka ‘iterative action’ (Ex. (5d)) or spatial cases such as the locative -n (Ex. (5e)).
(5)
Marmar a. Marmar as noun ‘rumour; whisper; grumble’ Beraz, herritarren errua ere izango da therefore citizen.gen fault.abs too be.fut aux.3sg marmar honekin jarraitzen badugu ide this.com continue.hab if.aux.1pl ‘Therefore, it will be people’s fault, if we keep on [spreading] this rumour’ b. Marmar as adverb ‘whispering; grumbling’ Bere buruarekin mintzo zen marmar 3sg.gen head.com hitz aux.3sg ide Lit. ‘S/he talked marmar (grumbling) with his/her head’ ‘S/he was grumbling to him/herself’ c. Marmar + egin ‘to groan; to whisper; to grumble’ Nire ondoan doan gizonak marmar egin I.gen side.loc goes.rel man.erg ide make du: ‘Ez dago eskubiderik’ aux.3sg neg is right.part ‘The man next to me grumbled: “It’s not fair”’ d. Marmar + -ka ‘whispering; grumbling’ Mutilek hartaz marmarka jardun zuten boys.erg that.inst ide.ite be.busy.doing aux.3pl ‘The boys were busy gossiping about that’ e. Kexarik badute, marmarrean hasten dira complaint.part if.have.3pl ide.loc start aux.3pl ‘If they have complaints, they start grunting’
As recently argued by Dingemanse (Reference Dingemanse and van Lier2022), the increasing body of cross-linguistic and typological research on ideophones has made clear the need for considering ideophones as an open lexical word class on their own. Ideophones may share with traditional word classes some of their grammatical and functional properties. However, despite these similarities, their structurally marked characteristics, versatile grammatical nature, productivity ratios, and their depictive sensory meanings provide ample evidence to justify considering them as a distinctive lexical word class.
10.3.7 Morphosyntactic integration
Another controversial issue in the ideophone literature is the degree of ideophone integration in the morphosyntactic structure of the utterance. Some authors have argued that ideophones are independent, non-integrated items, which stand aloof in the sentence (Kunene Reference Kunene1965). Other authors have proposed that it might be a question of degree and the type of ideophone construction: the more expressive ideophones are, the less grammatical integration they will show (Dingemanse & Akita Reference Dingemanse and Akita2017).
Basque ideophones cover a wide range of integration possibilities. As shown in Example (5) in §10.3.5, marmar illustrates cases where the ideophone is fully integrated in other constructions as a nominal complement in (5a) or as a predicative do-verb in (5c) (marmar egin). Thanks to different derivational and compounding processes, which are highly productive in Basque, ideophones become more syntactically integrated forms as in tinkitankari ‘what produces a continuous beating’ from tinki-tanka ‘beating; hammering’ + -(l)ari ‘agent’ or zarraparratsu ‘noisy’ from zarraparra ‘turmoil’ + -tsu ‘characteristic’.
As also illustrated in §10.3.5, the same ideophone marmar may also occur in less syntactically integrated cases as in Example (5b): marmar acts as a non-compulsory adverbial element. This is also the case of Example (6) represented in Figure 10.2. The ideophone taka-taka ‘walk in regular and small steps’ is performed at the end of the utterance together with a co-speech gestureFootnote 4 that iconically represents each step. This results in a more vivid (expressive) depiction of the scene.
(6)
Eta ixil-ixilik ixil-ixilik han joan dira, and quiet-quietly quiet-quietly there.loc go aux.3sg [taka taka taka taka] ide ‘And there they went very quietly taka taka taka taka [walking in regular and short steps]’
Figure 10.2 The ideophone taka-taka
Ideophones in Basque can also stand independently in Example (7). The speaker uses the ideophone pla-pla together with the co-speech gesture (both hands turning up and down quickly) to describe a traditional way of preparing anchovies (open and battered). The ideophone depicts the moment when the cook takes the open anchovy and swiftly batters it in flour before deep-frying it.
(7)
Pla-pla ra Ondarruko berbi. Pla-pla eindde, ide aux.3sg ondarroa.adn word ide make.aux.3sg [pla-pla pla-pla] ide ide ‘Pla-pla is a word from Ondarroa (Western dialect village). Pla-pla is done. Pla-pla pla-pla’
All of these examples seem to indicate that ideophones might be situated alongside a cline of syntactic integration. A cline that, as suggested by Dingemanse and Akita (Reference Dingemanse and Akita2017), might go hand in hand with the degree of expressiveness. Ideophones such as pla-pla are highly expressive, whereas ideophones in derived forms such as marmarka might be perceived as less expressive by speakers. In fact, some of ideophonic derived forms (e.g., ide+-tu/-du verbs such as labandu (laban ‘slip’-du) ‘to slip’, bildu ‘cover, wrap’ (bil(-bil) ‘circle/wrapping’-du), have undergone such an de-ideophonisation process, that they are no longer considered ideophones but prosaic words by speakers.
Figure 10.3 The ideophone pla-pla
10.3.8 Gesture
When orally produced, as already mentioned in §10.3.6, ideophones are usually co-articulated with gestures (Kita Reference Kita1993, Dingemanse Reference Dingemanse2013, Ibarretxe-Antuñano Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano2004, Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano2017). In Figure 10.4, the speaker, while explaining the meaning of mara-mara (see Table 10.1), moves both his hands in a zig-zag soft and downward movement that clearly depicts the essence of this ideophone.
10.4 The meaning of Basque ideophones
The non-arbitrary gradual relation between meaning and form in ideophones allows the distinction between ‘conventional’ and ‘sensory’ ideophones. The former are closer to onomatopoeia, that is, there is a direct imitation of a sound. The latter do not necessarily reproduce the sound of the event, entity, or characteristic they refer to. Basque is rich in both types. Conventional ideophones cover a wide range of semantic fields such as weather phenomenona (burrunba ‘thunder’), animal sounds (kurrin ‘pig grunt’), instruments (txintxirri ‘rattle’), and physical events such as hitting (zapla ‘slap’), ingestion (klaska-klaska ‘wolf down’), and destruction (zirrist-zarrast ‘saw’) (see Ibarretxe-Antuñano Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Körtvélyessy and Štekauer2023). Sensory ideophones are also central to the ideophone repertoire for light (dir-dir ‘shine; dazzle’), events (bristi-brasta ‘work carelessly’), and descriptive characteristics (sinkulin-minkulin ‘wimpy’, hili-hili ‘clumsily; with no energy’, barra-barra ‘profusely’), among others.
Table 10.4 summarises some of the main semantic areas covered by ideophones in Basque.
| Category | Subclass | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Actions and events | Motion | tinkun-tankun ‘walk clumsily’, antxintxi egin ‘run’ |
| Communication | xuxu-muxu ‘whispering’, txatxala-patxala ‘ramble’ | |
| Light | nir-nir egin ‘shine’, zirrinta ‘ray, beam’ | |
| Sound | brinbraun ‘clang’, gilin-gilin ‘sound of small cowbell’, zirris-zarras ‘sound of sawing’ | |
| Ingestion | zausta-zausta ‘wolf down’, hurrup ‘slurp’ | |
| Destruction | birrin-birrin ‘devastate; tear’, sisti-sasta ‘sting’ | |
| Hitting | blisti-blasta ‘slapping’, furrust-farrast ‘roar’, panpa-panpa ‘hit continuously’ | |
| Boiling | gal-gal ‘boil’, txil-txil ‘soft boiling’ | |
| Cooking | txir-txir ‘fry’, pla-pla ‘battered’ | |
| Emotions | irri egin ‘laugh’, intziri-mintziri ‘sob’ | |
| Body functions | tarrat ‘fart’, pilpil-pulpul ‘palpitate’ | |
| Badly-performed | firristi-farrasta ‘work carelessly’ | |
| States | mela-mela ‘soaked’, pla ‘withered’ | |
| Miscellany | bil-bil egin ‘wrap tightly’ | |
| Animals | Insects | burrun burrun ‘bumblebee’ |
| Crustaceans | karramarro ‘crab’ | |
| Birds | txantxangorri ‘robin’ | |
| Anphibians | klunklun ‘toad’ | |
| Fish | perpelete ‘gilthead’ | |
| Others | igiri-migiri ‘otter’ | |
| Plants | txantxar ‘henbane’, ziza ‘mushroom’ | |
| Weather | xirimiri, zirzira ‘drizzle’, xixta-mixta ‘lighting’ | |
| Musical instruments | dunbala ‘drum’, txintxirri ‘rattle’ | |
| Characteristics | Physical | farras ‘slovenly’, zirriborro ‘smudge’ |
| Psychological | kokolo-mokolo ‘idiot’, sinkulin-minkulin ‘wimpy’ | |
| Gadgets | garranga ‘hook, bait’, firinda ‘pulley’ | |
| Things | General | kiribil ‘spiral’ |
| Low value | tunt ‘not a thing’, tzirtzil ‘unimportant thing’ | |
| Child language | txitxi ‘meat’, mau-mau ‘eat’, ttotto ‘dog’ | |
| Quantity | barrasta-barrasta ‘profusely’, dalan-dalan ‘full’ | |
| Nature | brenk ‘precipitous mountain’ | |
| Sexual terms | txitxil ‘penis’ | |
| Miscellaneous | kinkirrinkon ‘champaine’ | |
From a semasiological viewpoint, ideophones are quite polysemous. They may encode a wide array of meanings and contexts. For instance, bar-bar means ‘drink in gulps; sound of bubbling water; cracking; sound of an insect’s walk; jabbering, talking; rhythmic falling of a light body; in droves; and noise, din’. Ideophones often encode metaphorical meanings as in bolo-bolo ‘spreading (news, gossip…)’. Sometimes, as happens for prosaic words, these metaphorical semantic extensions are conceptually motivated and select some of the defining properties of the non-metaphorical meaning. For example, parra-parra means ‘gush out’; when used in relation to spending, for instance, it means ‘profusely’ (that is, it selects the ‘quantity’ part of the meaning), but when apply to speaking, it could be talkative but also ‘frankly (speaking)’ (that is, it selects the ‘suddenness’ part, instead).
From an onomasiological viewpoint, ideophones present a great deal of (partial) synomymy. It is usual to find groups of ideophones that describe the same general event, and therefore, they can be taken as synonyms in certain contexts. However, on many occasions, their interchangeability is quite partial since their semantics usually includes certain specific nuances, which are sometimes overlooked in dictionaries but evident to speakers. An illustrative example in Basque is the group of ideophones that refer to ‘boiling’. All ideophones in (8) refer to this event, but as shown in their definitions, some refer to specific types of boiling. Definitions, adapted and expanded, are drawn from Azkue (Reference Azkue1905) and Mitxelena’s (1987–2008) dictionaries.
(8)
Boiling a. pil-pil (pill-pill; pir-pir) ‘movement of a liquid when boiling softly, small bubbles; superficial boiling; slow boiling typical of sauces when cooking’ b. txil-txil ‘soft boiling’ c. pul-pul ‘sound of external boiling; different from bol-bol’ d. bol-bol ‘sound of internal boiling; different from fil-fil ‘simmer’ or txir-txir ‘soft boiling, usually in oil (fry)’ e. pol-pol (poll-poll) ‘noisy boiling’ f. bor-bor (gor-gor; bro-bro) ‘deep boiling’ g. bal-bal ‘strong boiling’ h. gar-gar(-gar) ‘boiling on strong fire’ i. gal-gal(-gal) (kal-kal; khal-khal) ‘boiling with big bubbles’
10.5 The use of Basque ideophones
Ideophones in Basque are ubiquitous: they turned up in all registers (formal-informal), in all contexts (oral-written), at all ages, and in all dialects. In this respect, the dialectal distribution of ideophones may offer different possibilities. Some ideophones may be typical in one variety and less known to others (e.g. pla-pla ‘anchovy cooking’ (see Figure 10.4) in Ondarroa (Bizkaia, Western Basque) or dzingua ‘sudden seawater increase’ in Lekeitio (Bizkaia, Western Basque). Some other ideophones are known cross-dialectally but spelled out differently; for instance, the ideophone dizdiz (dirdir, dizdir, bir-bir, sirt-sart …) for ‘shine, dazzle’.
Finally, several ideophones may share similar meanings as ‘slide’ and ‘slip’, but not the dialectal distribution: laban is the preferred choice in western Basque and irrist in central Basque.
As far as their linguistic functions are concerned, ideophones fulfil a representational function as has been shown in the examples used in the preceding sections. Some objects (taratulu ‘drill’), some animals (karramarro ‘crab’), some phenomena (xirimiri ‘drizzle’), and some actions (irrist ‘slide’) are only encoded by means of ideophones. There is no other way of encoding them in the language, or at least, the ideophone is the prototypical way of naming them. What is more, ideophones are indispensable vehicles that represent complex, detailed, and specific meanings as shown in the case of boiling in Example (8).
Ideophones, nevertheless, also fulfil an important aesthetic function due to their compact meaning and expressivity (Ibarretxe-Antuñano Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano2022a). This is why they frequently occur in all sorts of creative manifestations of culture, both traditional and modern (songs, poems, riddles, etc.; see Ibarretxe-Antuñano Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano2020, Lecuona Reference Lecuona1964) as well as in all the forms of the linguistic landscape (public and private signs, advertising, etc.; see, Ibarretxe-Antuñano Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano2022b). Table 10.5 illustrates some real examples of the use of ideophones in Basque.
| Songs, poems | Popular song Tiriki tauki tauki / Arrankin trankin trankun with different variationsFootnote 5 and adaptations (Txirri, Mirri eta Txiribiton clowns version for kids and the poet Bitoriano Gadiaga’s poem) Tiriki-tauki ‘hit on an anvil’ and tauki-tauki ‘hammering’ |
| Public signs | Road and traffic signs Lit. ‘Careful with the one in front, risk of making talka [collide, crash]’ ‘Minimum space between cars’ |
| Public campaigns | European-founded anti-rumours network for diversity (C4i-Communication for Integration). Bilbao campaign. Lit. ‘Zurrumurruak [rumours] (Sp. Don’t let them seep through you! Rumours?) Blai [soaked] in information! |
| Advertising | Foreign language school Bai&By Lit. ‘The Marquis of Bai&By delivers certificates barra-barra [profusely]! Cambridge First and Advanced and all HABE levels [Basque certification]’ |
| Branding and naming | Shops and business Mara-mara [softly, abundance] bookstore; ZurruMurru [rumour] bookstore; Dir-dir [shine] jewel designer’s; Tiriki-tauki [strike on an anvil] jewellery; Talka [collide] shoe repairs; Dzingua [sudden seawater increase] surf shop; Tipi-tapa [walk in small and quick steps] cafe; Txurrut [swallow, gulp] cafe; Simiriri [drizzle] hotel. |
Finally, yet importantly, ideophones can be also considered aesthetic catalysers that produce an intimate interlocutive involvement among the ideophonic language speakers (Ibarretxe-Antuñano Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano2020, Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano2022b), an involvement that facilitates intertextuality and a group bonding effect within their linguistic community. As Childs (Reference Childs and Verma1998) has suggested, ideophones are often recognised by their speakers as part of their identity and, in Basque, ideophones are felt as a manifestation of ‘Basqueness’. Consequently, they are not only frequently used in the local linguistic landscape as shown in Table 10.5, but also in ‘outside’ contexts where what needs to be foregrounded is the Basque ‘essence’ or ‘character’. Figure 10.5 shows an example of this function of ideophones as an illustration of ‘Basqueness’. It reproduces an advertisement for the low-cost airline company Volotea. It belongs to a marketing campaign the airline launched when it started to operate from Bilbao International Airport in 2018. One of the new destinations was Málaga, Spain. The main text reads: ¿Txombo en la Malagueta y volvemos? ‘Txombo on the Malagueta [Malaga famous beach] and we come back?’ The advertisement includes the ideophone txonbo (spelled with an m according to Spanish orthographic rules). It means ‘dive headfirst into the water’ and it is part of the Bilbao lexicon.
Figure 10.5 Ideophones as a sign of Basqueness
10.6 Conclusions
This chapter has offered an overview of ideophones in Basque and has shown that Basque ideophones form an open lexical word class in this language. They are ubiquitous: they turn up in all contexts, registers, and dialects. They share a set of structural properties such as vowel harmony (plasta-plasta), palatalisation (ttipi-ttapa), specific phonotactics (dzist-dzast), or reduplication (fil-fil-fil). As lexical items, they may undergo morphological processes such as derivation (zarraparratsu) and compounding (irrist egin). However, they can also turn up in bare conditions, that is, lacking any morphological overt marking (furrust-farrast). This is why ideophones, and sometimes the same ideophone, may fulfil different functions associated with other word classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, interjections) and, consequently, show different degrees of syntactic integration in the structural contexts they appear in. Ideophones are typical in semantic domains that describe actions and events (motion, communication, destruction, ingestion, light, etc.), objects (instruments, gadgets, etc.), nature (animals, plants, weather, etc.), and physical or psychological characteristics, among others. Their meaning moves along a scale of iconicity: it ranges from the direct onomatopoeic imitation of physical sounds in conventional ideophones (zapla) to the sensory-based concepts in sensory ideophones (hili-hili). Similar to any other open lexical word class, ideophones exhibit semasiological and onomasiological relations. Some ideophones are highly polysemic and figuratively extend their meanings into more abstract domains (e.g. mara-mara). At the same time, groups of partial synonymic ideophones are frequent (e.g. boiling ideophones). As lexical items, ideophones fulfil a representational function. However, quite distinctively from other word categories, their meanings do not just represent concepts (e.g. boiling); meanings are depicted in a compact and vivid manner (pil-pil vs. gar-gar). This is why they also cover expressive functions sometimes relegated to other parts of the linguistic structure of a language (e.g. affective morphology, syntactic topicalisation, or prosody, inter alia). It is precisely their multifaceted nature that turns them into aesthetic catalysers; that is, interlocutive involvement and ‘Basqueness’ group bonding facilitators within and outside the Basque-speaking community. They are useful instruments that have been widely exploited in the creation of culture artifacts, linguistic landscape, and marketing.
As proclaimed in the title, the main purpose of this chapter has been to vindicate the role of ideophones as a distinctive typological feature of this language. The comprehensive overview provided in this chapter has demonstrated that Basque ideophones make up a prominent and singular lexical word class in this language. It is therefore about time they regain the place they deserve at the heart of the Basque language.
