The Language of Akan Ideophones

Abstract

This paper looks at ideophones, the study of which has been neglected in Akan linguistics. The paper will first look at some definitions given in the literature, then at the structure of ideophones by looking at its phonological and morphological components. It will also consider its syntactic, semantic and pragmatic functions and their impact on both the speaker and the addressee. Functionally, ideophones are a category of lexical items that are used to express some sensual perception. The paper will also look at the ethnographic contexts of Akan ideophones. We will see that ideophones kick against the arbitrariness of language because they are words whose sounds tally with their meanings. Ideophones in the Akan language have cognitive, phonological, morphological, semantic and pragmatic relations. Ideophones are used to express sensual perception, like sound, and feeling (both physical and emotional) and movement, intensity, duration and quantity. Each of these is exemplified from the data and the appendix.