IDEOPHONIC PAIRING AS A PAN-IGBO PHENOMENON

Abstract

The phenomenon of ideophonic pairing in Igbo, first identified in 
Uchechukwu (2007), is a form of doubling or reduplication of linguistic 
structures that involves the forming of an ideophonic pair, IDEO1IDEO2, 
either from an existing high tone ideophone or from a lexical item with a 
mixture of high and low tones. The output is IDEO[HIGH]IDEO[LOW]
whereby the first component has entirely high tones while the second 
component has entirely low tones. Also, the second component does not 
exist as an independent lexical item in the language; instead, the resultant 
pair is always systematically used together to express a contrastive, 
rhythmic schema that is meaningful in the language. This paper points to 
the possibility of this phenomenon being a pan-Igbo phenomenon.