Abstract
The ideophone, a word class not unique to but highly characteristic of the Bantu languages, presents particular challenges in both monolingual and bilingual lexicography. Not only is this part of speech without a counterpart in most other languages, the meaning of ideo-phones is highly elusive. In this research article these challenges are studied by means of an analy-sis of the treatment of ideophones in a corpus-driven Zulu–English school dictionary project. Keywords: lexicography, dictionary, bilingual, corpus, frequency, bantu, zulu (isizulu), english, ideophone, semantic import, paraphrase, part-of-speech mismatch
Highlights
De ideofoon, een woordklasse die niet uniek maar wel heel karakteristiek is voor de Bantoetalen, is een echte uitdaging in zowel de monolinguale als bilinguale lexicografie
The term 'ideophone' has not been entered as a lemma sign in the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED Online 2009), it may be found within the article of the combining form 'ideo-', as shown in (1): (1) ideo- combining form of Gr. ί δ έ α IDEA, as in [...] ideophone (- f ɘ ʊ n) [Gr. φ ω ν ή voice, sound], (a) term used by A
First recorded in 1881, the meaning assigned to the term 'ideophone' under (1, sense a), was redefined as (2) in the Century Dictionary Supplement of 1909 (Century Dictionary Online 2009): (2) ideophone (ī - d ē ' ō - f ō n), n. [Gr. ί δ έ α, idea, + φ ω ν ή, sound.] In phonetics, the auditory symbol of a word or phrase that is perceived as a whole and constitutes a single idea
Summary
Compared to monolingual dictionary making, the absence of a corresponding word class in the non-Bantu language, forces the bilingual dictionary maker to come up with various strategies to 'translate/transpose' the examples. When the ideophones are onomatopoeic-like, English sound words can be inserted or recourse can be taken to English exclamations. Instances of the former may be seen in (11, sense 3) and (12), instances of the latter in (13) and (14, sense 1):. The Zulu ideophones need to be translated with English verbs, as in (8) above, or with English phrasal verbs, as in (9, sense 1) or (10, sense 2) above. Zulu ideophones may conveniently be translated with noun phrases, as in (9, sense 3) above, or (15) below:. The use of other English parts of speech and constructions to translate Zulu ideophones is possible but infrequent.
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