Terminological diversity in descriptions of Kiranti ideophonic lexemes

Abstract

In this article, I document terms which have been used for ideophonic lexemes in descriptions of Kiranti (Trans-Himalayan/Sino-Tibetan) languages and their evolution over time. This involves identifying ideophonic lexemes in existing descriptions of these languages, on the basis of morphophonological patterns they tend to share throughout the Kiranti area (Eastern Nepal), collecting all the associated terms, and placing them in the context of the descriptions in which they appear. This analysis of the terminological choices by different authors in descriptive work on these languages is motivated by a desire to make data on ideophones in this linguistic area more accessible to a typologically oriented readership. In so doing, it raises awareness about the difficulties in describing these lexemes before the appearance of a unified comparable framework, something we now have access to through work by researchers such as Dingemanse.

Keywords

• nepal
• kiranti grammaticography
• ideophones
• expressives