Canonical Shape Analysis of Hausa and Bole Ideophones

Hausa and Bole are two languages from the same phylum i.e. Afro-asiatic. They have some common various linguistic features, most especially phonological and syntactic features. The main purpose of this paper is to come up with one of the phonological aspects of one of the word classes of Hausa and Bole. This means, we will analyse the syllable structure, which is canonical shape of ideophones of both languages using descriptive method of analysis adopted by Newman (2000). In Hausa, likewise in Bole, ideophones are numerous and several of them are commonly used syntactically. But, we will not deal with their syntactical use or function in this paper, what we focus on, is just their canonical shapes i.e. syllable structures. The paper is divided into four sections: sections one and four are introduction and conclusion respectively, while section two is descriptive analysis of canonical shape of Hausa ideophones, and section three, is of Bole ideophones.


Introduction
Hausa is a major language of West Africa with an estimated 35-40 million speakers (Newman & Newman, 2001:264). According to Ethnologue estimation, Hausa speakers are 41 million (26,929,000 as first language (L1) speakers, while 15,000,000 as second language (L2) speakers). Hausa is the first language of ethnic Hausas and some settled Fulanis in Hausaland, which stretches across the northern states of Nigeria and into southern Niger, and of some Hausa communities in the Sudan. It is also spoken as a first language by scattered settlements (zango) throughout West Africa, and as a second language or lingua franca ① by millions of non-Hausas in northern Nigeria and in some

Canonical shapes of Hausa and Bole ideophones
Ideophones are special class of words that are used to describe sound, colour, shape, manner, etc. According to Newman (2000:242), ideophones are "phonaesthetic words" that "describe sound, colour, smell, manner, appearance, state, action or intensity…that is they are words that are vivid vocal images or representation of visual, auditory and other sensory or mental experience". Crystal (2008:235) on the other hand defines ideophone as "a term used in linguistics and phonetics for any vivid representation of an idea in sound, such as occurs through onomatopoeia". Ideophones are characterized not only by their expressiveness in meaning, but also by their form. Ideophones in Hausa and Bole have a much more significant role than do in English onomatopoeic words.
Ideophones can be grouped into regular phonological classes. In this section, we descriptively analyse some of Hausa and Bole ideophones based on their common form, that is their syllable structures or "canonical shapes" as stated by Newman (2000).

Analysis of Hausa Ideophones canonical shape
In Hausa, ideophones are numerous and several of them are very commonly used. Most ideophones in Hausa tend to be the same syllable structure end in a consonant. Since ideophones are extremely numerous in Hausa, we have only been possible to identify the following canonical shapes with few examples of ideophones.

Monosyllabic
Monosyllabic ideophones contain only one syllable which has the Onset + Nucleus + (Coda) structure, whereas Onset stands for Consonant, Nucleus stands for Vowel (short or long), and optional Coda stands for Consonant or semi-vowel (approximant sound). The following are identified shapes of monosyllabic ideophones in Hausa: (i) CVC This shape is for monosyllabic ideophones typically consist of Consonant-Vowel (short)-Consonant closed syllable (including CV y and CV w ideophones having approximants as their final (coda) sounds). These ideophones most commonly have H tone. A lesser number have L or F tone. Examples: High Tone There is also a few monosyllabic ideophones with the shape CVV (Consonant-Vowel (long)). All of these ideophones with such structure describe some kind of movement or sound. Below are the complete examples of these ideophones, according to Newman (2000). And, they all, except one, have low tone. (ii) CV i C-CV i C This class is similar to the preceding in being composed of consonant-final, disyllabic a coda of no more than one short consonant (in terms of phonological length, a mora); a heavy (or "strong") syllable is any other type (its phonological length being greater than one mora)" (Crystal, 2008: 520). Open refers to a syllable which ends in a vowel, as opposed to the closed which refers to syllable which ends in a consonant. ① That is, they have same phonetic features.
ideophones with identical vowels. It differs in having a closed heavy initial syllable. The tone pattern is Low-High. Examples: "in large number scattered abundantly" CV i C-CV i C (28) kirtif = /kì ɽ.tiɸ/ "describes thickness of a fluid or liquid"

(iii) CVV-CVC
There is small set of disyllabic consonant-final ideophones that is prosodically similar to the preceding class (ii) in having an initial heavy syllable and Low-High tone pattern (and one example of Low-Low). In this shape, the initial syllable is open and the two vowels are always different. Examples:

Trisyllabic
Trisyllabic ideophones refer to ideophonic words that typically contain three syllables. In Hausa, there are three classes of canonical shapes of trisyllabic ideophones, as we shall see below.
(i) CV i -C J V i -C J V i This group consists of monotonal trisyllabic ideophones containing identical short vowels and identical second and third consonants, i.e. the last two syllables are exact copies of one another. The vowels are either /a/ or /u/, never /i/. About two-thirds of the ideophones have all High tone; the others have all Low tone. Examples: High Tone Pattern

Low Tone Pattern
(37) sukuku = /sù.kù.kù/ "in a sad, despondent mood" This is small class of trisyllabic ideophones, which is similar to the preceding group (i) in having identical vowels and matching second and third consonants. It is different in that the vowels are all long, typically most of them with the mid-vowels /e:/ and /o:/ (and one example with low vowel /a:/ according to Newman (2000:246)). The tone pattern is all Low. Examples: (40) boɗoɗo = /bòo.ɗòo.ɗòo/ "in an exposing manner" CVV i -C J VV i -C J VV i (iii) CV i C-C J V i C-C J V i C This class includes trisyllabic ideophones consisting of three closed syllables, the last two of which are identical, i.e. these ideophones are formed by reduplication of the final syllable of the usual disyllabic base. The vowels are all identical, but the consonants are distinct. They all have Low tone pattern. Examples: (44) burɗunɗun = /bùɽ.ɗùn.ɗùŋ/ "emphasizes swelling" 45) ƙursunsun = /k'ùɽ.sùn.sùŋ/ "describes the touch of hard objects"

Polysyllabic
In addition to canonical shapes that we have seen above, there are few exceptional shapes which do not fall into any one of the aforementioned ones. These ideophones are polysyllabic, i.e. they have more than one syllabic structure and their syllable structure is not identical to all of the structures or shapes that we have analysed. They all end in diphthong /ai/ or low vowel /a/ plus a nasal consonant. All of them have Low tone pattern. Newman (2000:249) gives the complete examples of these ideophones as we shall see below with their canonical shapes: From the above examples 47-52, we noticed that the canonical shapes of the ideophones are different. Example 47 and 48 seem to be same, both have identical vowel in initial, second and third syllables; but the consonant of the second syllable in 48 is labialized, while in 47 the consonant of second syllable is not labialized, i.e. it is a primary articulation. Example 49 have identical vowel in first and second syllables, likewise in 50. But in 50, the first consonant of initial syllable is identical to first consonant of second syllable. Example 51 has its own shape which is not similar to any of the examples. Finally, example 52 has identical vowel in initial, second, and third syllables, plus a final labialized sound and a diphthong.
① Shapes like C w or C j refers to secondary articulation of a sound where a sound produced with two points of articulation. The above C w and C j are called "labialization" and "palatalization" respectively. Palatalization is a general term referring to any articulation involving a movement of the tongue towards the hard palate. Labialization is a general term referring to a secondary articulation involving any noticeable lip-rounding (Crystal, 2008).

Reduplicative
In Hausa, there are some ideophones formed by reduplicating ideophonic base. Most of the reduplicative ideophones are having full reduplication of base plus an H-L, H-H, and L-H tone melodies with the following canonical shapes.
(i) CV i C-CV i C x 2 In this shape of heavy-heavy syllable ideophones, the idephonic base is reduplicating two times in order to have reduplicative ideophones which have identical vowels in base and reduplicator plus two different tone melodies of H-L (i.e. High tone on base, while Low tone on reduplicator) and L-H (i.e. Low tone on base, while High tone on reduplicator. Examples: High-Low Tone Pattern (ii) CV-CVV x 2 This shape of reduplicative ideophones has iambic (light-heavy) syllable structure in both base and reduplicator. The two vowels of first and second syllables are not identical (the first is short and the second is long). All base form syllables have High tone, while reduplicator syllables have Low tone. There is also some reduplicative ideophones that have similar canonical shape with this, but their tone melody is Low on base form and High tone melody on reduplicator. Examples: High-Low Tone Pattern (iii) CV i -CV i C x 2 This shape of reduplicative ideophones also has iambic light-heavy syllable (but the heavy syllable in this shape is closed, unlike preceded shape (ii) that has second open heavy syllable), and identical vowels in both first and second syllables. But, this shape has two different tone melodies: H-L (High on base form, Low on reduplicator) and L-H (Low on base and High on reduplicator). Examples: High-Low Tone Pattern

(iv) CV i -CV i x 2
① In Sakkwatanci (Sokoto dialect), all these reduplicative ideophones with this canonical shape have HH-LF tone pattern instead of HH-LL tone pattern. (see Sambo, 2014) This shape contains reduplicative ideophones which have light-light syllable structure with identical short vowels. The tone pattern of these reduplicative ideophones is always H-H (High tone on two syllables of base form and also High tone on two syllables of reduplicator). Examples:

Analysis of Bole ideophones canonical shape
Ideophones in Bole are not numerous as in Hausa. In this analysis we identify only 29 ideophones from Bole as our examples in descriptively analyzing canonical shapes of ideophonic words in the language. But, the syllable structures of Bole ideophones seem to be same with that of Hausa ideophones because there are consonant-final ideophones in Bole like in Hausa (which most of its ideophones are consonant-final). Below, we shall see canonical shapes of Bole ideophones base on their syllable structures.

Monosyllabic
In Bole, like in Hausa, monosyllabic ideophones have syllable structure of Onset + Nucleus + (Coda), which stands for Consonant Vowel and Optional Coda respectively. The following are shapes of monosyllabic ideophones that we identified from Bole.
(i) CVC This shape contains monosyllabic ideophones which have consonant vowel consonant. The tone pattern of these ideophones is always High. Examples:

Disyllabic
Disyllabic ideophones are those ones that have two syllable structures. In Bole, we find the following canonical shapes of disyllabic ideophones.
(i) C J V i C k -C J V i C k This shape of disyllabic ideophones has heavy-heavy syllables which are also closed syllables. The two vowels of these ideophones are identical, and initial consonant of each syllable is identical to one another, likewise final consonant of each syllable. We find two different tone patterns with this shape: H-H tone pattern and L-L tone pattern. Examples: High -High Tone Pattern (81) sulsul = /sul.sul/ "smooth of surface" C J V i C k -C J V i C k (82) golgol = /gol.gol/ "small and round" C J V i C k -C J V i C k (83) shimshim = /ʃim.ʃim/ "very little" C J V i C k -C J V i C k (84) ɓilɓil = /ɓil.ɓil/ "tiny"

Low-Low Tone Pattern
(87) shomshom = /ʃòm.ʃòm/ "fermented (beer, porridge, etc.)" (88) nyamnyam = /ɲjàm.ɲjàm/ "creating a hubbub" (90) kerker = /kè r.kè r/ "stubby" (ii) CVC-CVC We find only two ideophones with this shape which is similar to preceded shape (i) in having closed heavy syllables, and High tone pattern. But, vowels of this shape are not identical, likewise its initial and final consonant of each syllable. Examples: CV i C-C J VV i -C J VV i (ii) CVV i -C J VV i -C J VV i This is the last shape among the trisyllabic ideophones in Bole. The shape has all open-heavy syllable structure. Vowels of this shape are identical; likewise consonants of second and third syllables are also identical. Its tone pattern is High. Examples: (104) yororo = /joo.roo.roo/ "watery" CVV i -C J VV i -C J VV i (105) zututu = /zuu.tuu.tuu/ "oblong" CVV i -C J VV i -C J VV i

Conclusion
Ideophonic class of words is one of the lexical categories of Hausa and Bole languages. And, it is indeed, one of the controversial (grammatical) classes of both languages (though, this was not our concern in this paper). This article analyzed the syllable structures of this controversial class. And, we find out that there are many different canonical shapes of different syllable structures of ideophonic words from Hausa and Bole. In Hausa, we found the following canonical shapes: (monosyllabic) CVC, CVV; (disyllabic) CV-CVC, CV i C-CV i C, CVV-CVC; (trisyllabic) CV i -C J V i -C J V i , CVV i -C J VV i -C J VV i , CV i C-C J V i C k -C J V i C k ; (polysyllabic) CV i -CV i -CV i C, CV i -C w V i -CV i C, CV i C-CV i -CVV, C J V i C-C J V i C-CVV, CV-CV-CVV, CV i C-CV i -CV i -C w VV; (reduplicative) CV i C-CV i C x 2, CV-CVV x 2, CV i -CV i C x 2, CV i -CV i x 2, CVC-CVV x 2 from total number of 72 ideophones. Likewise in Bole, we found the following canonical shapes: (monosyllabic) CVC; (disyllabic) C J V i C k -C J V i C k , CVC-CVC, CVV i -CVV i , CV i -CV i C; (trisyllabic) CVC-CV i -CV i C, CV i C-C J VV i -C J VV i , CVV i -C J VV i -C J VV i from 29 words of ideophone. Each among those canonical shapes has its own distinguished tone melody. One shape might have two or more different tone patterns.
Finally, this article came up with some findings of descriptive analysis of some Hausa and Bole ideophones which shed the light of their syllable structures and tone patterns. This does not mean that they are the only possible shapes from Hausa and Bole ideophones. Further research might come up with another descriptive analysis which can find out some possible shapes among Hausa and Bole ideophones.