Iconic Morphology and the Study of Ideophones in Ghɔmálá’

Abstract

Speakers of Ghɔmálá’ are unanimous about the fact that certain words, heard for the first time, are immediately accessible to them. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that certain sound sequences are conventionalized in such a way that semantic associations are directly apparent. The language attests seemingly iconic patterns of word formation and thus offers evidence for us to uphold the idea that the relation between the Saussurian “signifier” and  “signified” is significanltly less arbitrary than originally assumed. This paper introduces a language, Ghɔmálá’ where sound symbolism is a feature of the lexicon and even manifests itself in parts of the morphology. The objective of this paper is twofold: (1) to analyze iconic morphology which reveals the sources of some words in the language and results in the formation of pure words, and (2) to analyze ideophones and differentiate them from iconic words.