Neurological evidence for the context-independent multisensorial semantics of ideophones in Pastaza Kichwa: an fNIRS study in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Ideophones – imitative words using the stream of speech to simulate/depict the rise and fall of sensory perceptions and emotions and temporal experiences of completiveness, instantaneousness, and repetitiveness – have been characterized as semantically empty and context-dependent. The research repor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language and cognition 2024-12, Vol.16 (4), p.2188-2215
Main Authors: Dewey, Dan P., Green, Jeffrey J., Nuckolls, Janis, Nygaard, Auna, Swanson, Todd D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brain
Context
Dialects
embodied cognition
fNIRS
ideophones
Linguistics
Medical imaging
Motion
Neuroimaging
neurolinguistics
Onomatopoeia
Pastaza Kichwa
Semantic categories
semantic maps
semanticity
Semantics
Sound
Speech perception
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Summary:Ideophones – imitative words using the stream of speech to simulate/depict the rise and fall of sensory perceptions and emotions and temporal experiences of completiveness, instantaneousness, and repetitiveness – have been characterized as semantically empty and context-dependent. The research reported here tested a simple schematic for the semantic categories of Pastaza Kichwa ideophones by tracking neurological responses to ideophones categorized as VISUAL, MOTION, and SOUND. Seventeen native speakers of Pastaza Kichwa listened to audio clips of ideophones extracted from sentential contexts. Subjects’ neural activity was assessed using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Results demonstrate that these posited semantic categories activate areas of the brain associated with visualization, motion, and sound processing and production, respectively. This suggests that these ideophones convey semantic information related to these concepts, independent of context. This contrasts with what would be expected by theories suggesting that ideophones on their own are semantically empty. The data give rise to questions regarding whether any language contains only sound ideophones that do not carry additional sensory information and whether ideophones in previous studies treated strictly as sound ideophones might require greater specification of their semantics, specifically from a multisensorial perspective.
ISSN:1866-9808
1866-9859
DOI:10.1017/langcog.2023.55