Abstract
Abstract Ideophones and direct quotations are “depictive” signs, or vivid re-enactments of what they signify. Pursuing the typology of linguistic depiction, the current study proposes a three-way classification of depiction marking strategies: framing, foregrounding, and backgrounding. While well-known formal characteristics of ideophones, such as prosodic prominence and quotative constructions, illustrate framing and foregrounding, this paper discusses low-pitched quotative indexes in Japanese as backgrounding-type depiction markers. These quotatives immediately follow ideophones and exclamatory quotations and set them off. They also underlie the exceptional pitch pattern of heavy syllables in ideophones.
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