Ideophones in Sena (Bantu, Mozambique)

Abstract

Based on a recently collected fieldwork corpus, this paper offers an overview of ideophones in Sena, a Bantu language spoken along the Lower Zambezi River in central Mozambique. By closely examining the different features (phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics) of Sena ideophones, this paper aims to identify the language-internal aspects of ideophones. The claim is that Sena ideophones are best treated as a distinctive word class whose members can be used in a variety of syntactic constructions. A crucial aspect of their syntactic properties is their ability to be used as holophrastic predicates.

Keywords

• ideophones
• word classes
• holophrastic predication
• sena
• bantu