Editing Ideophone (section)

{{distinguish|text=[[idiophone]], a class of musical instruments}}
{{Use American English|date = February 2019}}
{{Short description|Words evoking ideas of specific sounds or other sensations}}
[[File:Jaan! in Hakui.jpg|thumb|A sculpture demonstrating an example of Japanese sound symbolism, "''jaan!''" ({{lang|ja|ジャーン}})]]
An '''ideophone''' (also known as a '''mimetic''' or '''expressive''') is a member of the [[word class]] of [[word]]s that depict sensory imagery or sensations,<ref name=dingemanse23>{{cite book 
|last1=Dingemanse |first1=Mark 
|editor-last=van Lier |editor-first=Eva
|title=Oxford Handbook of Word Classes 
|date=2023
|publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford
|isbn= 9780191887185 |pages=466-476 
|doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198852889.013.15
|chapter=Ideophones
}}</ref> evoking ideas of action, sound, movement, color, or shape. The class of ideophones is the least common [[syntactic category]] cross-linguistically; it occurs mostly in African, Australian, and [[Amerindian languages]], and sporadically elsewhere.  Ideophones resemble [[interjection]]s but are different owing to their special [[Phonetics|phonetic]] or [[Derivational morpheme|derivational]] characteristics, and based on their syntactic function within the sentence. They may include sounds that deviate from the language's phonological system, [[Imitation|imitating]]—often in a repetitive manner—sounds of movement, animal noises, bodily sounds, noises made by tools or machines, and the like.<ref name="Sasse">{{cite book |last=Sasse |first=Hans-Jürgen |title=Syntax--Theory and Analysis: An International Handbook |date=2015 |publisher=De Gruyter |isbn=9783110202762 |editor-last=Kiss and Alexiadou |pages=158–217 |chapter=Syntactic categories and subcategories}}</ref>

It is globally the only known word class that does not appear in [[English language|English]]. While English does have ideophonic or onomatopoetic expressions, it does not contain a proper class of ideophones because any English onomatopoeic word can be included in one of the classical categories. For example, ''la-di-da'' functions as an adjective while others, such as ''zigzag'', may function as a verb, adverb or adjective, depending on the clausal context. In the sentence "The rabbit zigzag'''ged''' across the meadow", the verb zigzag takes the past ''-ed'' verb ending. In contrast, the reconstructed example *"The rabbit ''zigzag zigzag'' across the meadow" emulates an ideophone but is not [[idiom (language structure)|idiomatic]] to English.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/27594/how-do-ideophones-and-onomatopoeia-work-in-english |title=Linguistics. How do ideophones and onomatopoeia work in English? |last= |first= |date= |website=linguistics.stackexchange.com |publisher= |access-date=7 October 2022 |quote=}}</ref>

Dictionaries of languages like Japanese, Korean, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu list thousands of ideophones.<ref>{{Cite book|url=http://www.lib.kobe-u.ac.jp/handle_gakui/D1004724|archive-url=https://archive.today/20140104105027/http://www.lib.kobe-u.ac.jp/handle_gakui/D1004724|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 4, 2014|title=A Grammar of Sound-Symbolic Words in Japanese: Theoretical Approaches to Iconic and Lexical Properties of Japanese Mimetics|last=Akita|first=Kimi|publisher=Kobe University|year=2009}}</ref> Sometimes ideophones are called ''phonosemantic'' to indicate that it is not a grammatical word class in the traditional sense of the word (like [[verb]] or [[noun]]), but rather a lexical class based on the special relationship between form and meaning exhibited by ideophones. In the discipline of [[linguistics]], ideophones have sometimes been overlooked or treated as a subgroup of interjections.<ref name="Sasse2">{{cite book |last=Sasse |first=Hans-Jürgen |title=Syntax--Theory and Analysis: An International Handbook |date=2015 |publisher=De Gruyter |isbn=9783110202762 |editor-last=Kiss and Alexiadou |pages=158–217 |chapter=Syntactic categories and subcategories}}</ref>