The Structure and Function of Ideophones in the SUBA Language

Abstract

After my seven (7) years of reducing the Suba language into written from and translating the Bible into the language it came to the realization of the team that there were certain concepts which would not be expressed in any other way except by ideophones and onomatopoeia. When left out, a native speaker of the language finds the language sounding unnatural but whenever used appropriately an addition of some rich linguistic flavor is registered immediately. One of the least studied features of human language by linguistics is ideophone and onomatopoeia. Whether they qualify to be categorized, as language proper is still a subject of debate among linguists. While some like Awoyale take ideophones and onomatopoeia as linguistic features with semantic and pragmatic value and hence worth being accounted, for others like Wescott they are nothing but "allolanguage." This paper is a descriptive study of ideophones and to a lesser extent, onomatopoeia in the Suba language. It aims at establishing what ideophones are, whether or not they have semantic, discourse or pragmatic roles in language. Our starting point shall be to consider the lexical categories of ideophones in the Suba language before proceeding to look at the phonological and morphological structure of ideophones in the language. The end result of this paper is not only to establish the place of ideophones in language but more so to ascertain whether or not the use of ideophones can improve the quality of a Scripture translation or written language in general in those languages which have them.