Propriétés des idéophones en guñaamolo, langue atlantique du Sénégal

Abstract. This article deals with the study of ideophones in Guñaamolo, an Atlantic language spoken in the south (Casamance) of Senegal. Ideophones are recognised as particular words that are organised in a way that is relatively marginal in relation to the regular system of the language. Doke, in his Bantu Linguistic Terminology (1935: 118), defines them as follows: "A word, often onomatopeic, which describes a predicate, qualificative, or adverb in respect to manner, color, sound, action, state, or intensity". However, in Guñaamolo, ideophones have invariable forms and participate in the construction of a verbal syntagm; their occurrence is linked to the presence of a particular verb. In this study, we examine the specific phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic properties of the different ideophones