Iconicity of Telugu ideophones and full word reduplications

Abstract

This paper offers an account of variation in iconicity within and between ideophones and Full Word Reduplications (FWRs) in Telugu texts. Some of this variation is connected to differences in the grammatical classes to which these structures belong, the types of constructions in which they participate, and the semantic functions they encode. Adverbial ideophones, occurring largely as optional elements in quotative and collocational constructions have more iconicity than interoceptive ideophones in predicate-verbal constructions. Fully reduplicated regular and verbal adverbs with an augmentation function have higher levels of iconicity than adjectival FWRs serving multiple functions including evaluative meanings associated with diminution or attenuation. Based on these observations, a tentative scale of iconicity is proposed for Telugu. This scale should be elaborated and validated in future research by making use of multimodal corpora of ideophones and all varieties of reduplicative structures.