Based on extensive fieldwork in Peru among Ashéninka Perené Arawaks, this study is a preliminary report on ideophone-gesture composites, with special focus on the meaning and functions of ideophone-gesture couplings within participatory learning frameworks. In expert-novice learning environments, ideophone-gesture composites appear to carry a unique cognitive-communicative load by forming scaffolding knowledge structures on the basis of the conventionalized ideophone-gesture inventories. The data are illustrative of Streeck's (2009) vision of the hands' involvement in meaning-making, i.e., that some of the ways in which depictive gestures evoke the world ascend from a basic set of everyday activities of hands in the world, within particular ecological and cultural settings.

This research is a first attempt to survey ideophones in the Amazonian Arawak language Alto Perene (a.k.a. Ashéninka Perene). Based on fieldwork data, this study shows that ideophones constitute a separate class of words in Alto Perene in view of their distinctive phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties. The study also draws on primary and secondary data from three other genetically related neighboring language varieties (Ashéninka Pichis, Asháninka Tambo-Ene, and Kakinte) to demonstrate a moderate degree of interdialect variation. The study suggests the possibility that the following properties may be regional affinities: non-canonical stress assignment; word class-specific reduplication of the word-final syllabic segments -ri, -re, -ro, -pi, -po expressing spatial distribution, intensity, or repeated/durative/open-ended temporal structure of the reported event; productive ( Vj/c-suffixation contributing to the expression of punctual/perfective aspect; syntactic functions of appositional or coordinated predicate, co-verb, complement, and adverb; prevalence of Gestalt packaging of sensory events; a dearth of ideophones describing states.

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