Sounds Like Life: Sound-Symbolic Grammar, Performance, and Cognition in Pastaza Quechua

by Janis B. Nuckolls

Overview

Sound-symbolism occurs when words resemble the sounds associated with the phenomena they attempt to describe, rather than an arbitrary representation. For example the word raven is arbitrary in that it does not resemble a raven; cuckoo, however, is sound -symbolic in that it resembles the bird's call. In Sounds Like Life, Janis Nuckolls studies the occurrence of sound-symbolic words in Pastaza Quechua (a dialect of Quechua), which is spoken in eastern Ecuador. The use of sound-symbolic words is much more prevalent in Pastaza Quechua than in any other language, and they symbolize a wider range of sensory perceptions including sounds, rhythms, and visual patterns. Nuckolls uses discourse data from everyday contexts to demonstrate the Quechua speakers' elaborate schematic perceptual structure to describe experience through sound-symbolic language. With words for contact with a surface, opening and closing, falling, sudden realizations, and moving through water and space, Nuckolls finds that sound-symbolism is integral to the Quechua speakers' way of thinking about and expressing their experience of the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195358247
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/18/1996
Series:	Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics , #2
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Lexile:	1320L (what's this?)
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

University of Alabama-Birmingham

Table of Contents

	Abbreviations and Symbols	xiii
I	Sound-Symbolic Grammar and Performance
1	Introduction	3
2	The Theoretical Dimensions of Aspect	21
3	The Grammatical Ecology of Aspect in Pastaza Quechua	40
4	The Performative Expression of Durativity and Perfectivity	62
5	Sound-Symbolic Involvement	79
6	Signs of Life in Sound	101
II	The Sound-Symbolic Construction of Spatiotemporal Experience
7	Sound-Symbolic Iconicity and Grammar	137
8	Sound-Symbolic Contrasts of Sensible Experience	145
9	Sound Symbols of Contact and Penetration	178
10	Sound Symbols of Opening and Closing	204
11	Sound Symbols of Falling	219
12	Sound Symbols of Deformation	232
13	Sound Symbols of Suddenness and Completiveness	250
14	Conclusion	276
Appendix	Conjugation of rina	281
	Notes	283
	Bibliography	289
	Index	295

Editorial Reviews

"The book speaks for the value of intensively conducted linguistic field research, evocatively encourages our reassessments of dichotomic theories about language, and will doubtless occupy quite a unique place on the shelves of Quechua studies for some years to come."—Anthropological Linguistics

"An excellent study....It will be an important contribution to anthropological linguistics in general and to our understanding of language and culture relations in Native South America in particular."—Joel Sherzer, University of Texas, Austin

"...[it is] a work that soars high and captures some alluring snapshots of the fascinating interplay between grammatical aspect and sound-symbolic forms in the spoken language performance of a nonliterate culture. It is a stimulating exploration that anyone interested in sound symbolism will have to consult."—Journal of Anthropological Research

From the Publisher