The Use of Basque Ideophones in Motion Events

Abstract This paper investigates motion ideophones in Basque, a high-salient-path verb-framed language with a large repertoire of Manner-of-motion ideophones (Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2023, 2025). Two main questions are addressed: Does the presence of Manner ideophones affect the inclusion of this component in Basque motion descriptions, and what factors influence its use? Three datasets were analysed: the IdEus-Psylex Stimulus Kit , the IdEus Motion Questionnaire , and different motion event stimuli (Frog stories, Canary Row, and novels). Results show that (i) Manner is more frequent in Basque motion events than in other verb-framed languages but less frequent than in satellite-framed languages, and (ii) motion ideophones are used across contexts regardless of sociolinguistic factors (age), diatopic variation (all Basque dialects), and discourse mode (oral, written). However, their distribution is uneven: some ideophones are widely known and used by all speakers, while others are more age- and dialect-specific.