Ideophones in Motion Event Descriptions in Kupsapiiny and Sidaama: Conceptualization of Manners of Motion as Sounds and Postures

Abstract This paper examines the use of ideophones in motion event descriptions in Kupsapiiny (Southern Nilotic; Uganda; anti-verb-framed with path-affix satellites) and Sidaama (Highland East Cushitic; Ethiopia; verb-framed). Both languages lack verbs for expressive manners of motion, but Kupsapiiny has a much richer inventory of expressive ideophones that can be used to describe motion events than Sidaama. This contradicts Schaefer’s (2001) hypotheses that ideophones are largely restricted to verb-framed languages and that they primarily depict expressive manners of motion, which are absent from these languages’ lexical inventories. Although ideophones might seem irrelevant to Talmy’s (2000) motion typology, a closer examination reveals that while both languages lack direct means of expressing detailed manners through verbs, adverbs, or ideophones, Kupsapiiny distinguishes various sounds using ideophones, only some of which are loosely associated with specific motions, whereas Sidaama often conceptualizes unusual manners as postures, with ideophones only occasionally used to describe posture changes.