Lexicographic Treatment of Hausa Ideophones: Old Approaches versus Contemporary Trend

Citation: Ibrahim AHMED (PhD) (2023). Lexicographic Treatment of Hausa Ideophones: Old Approaches versus Contemporary Trend. Yobe Journal of Language, Literature and Culture (YOJOLLAC), Vol. 11, Number 1. Department of African Languages and Linguistics, Yobe State University, Damaturu, Nigeria. ISSN 2449-0660

LEXICOGRAPHIC TREATMENT OF HAUSA IDEOPHONES: OLD APPROACHES VERSUS CONTEMPORARY TREND

By

Ibrahim Ahmed (PhD)

Abstract

This paper ascertains how the Hausa ideophones, as a grammatically distinct class of words, are lexicographically treated across major Hausa dictionaries. Thirty (30) Hausa ideophonic words are used as a sample with seven Hausa dictionaries comprising one monolingual i.e. the Hausa-Hausa type and six bilingual i.e. the Hausa-English types also selected for the study. The selected dictionaries are further split into two generational types i.e. the old generation types and the contemporary generation types. Each of the dictionaries is examined in the light of the sampled ideophones to ascertain the ideophones’ occurrences and how they are labeled as head entries. The labels assigned to the ideophones as head entries in the particular dictionaries are the major determinants of how they are lexicographically treated across the two generational divides of the dictionaries. The study discovers that: (1) Hausa ideophones that occur as head entries in the old generation Hausa dictionaries are either not labeled at all or are mostly treated not as ideophones but rather as adverbs (Adv/adv), which is the ‘old approaches’. (2) In the contemporary generation Hausa dictionaries, ideophonic words that occur as head entries are treated not as adverbs but mostly as ideophones (id/idph), which is the ‘contemporary trend’.

Introduction

Lexicographic practice in general has a long history. It is believed to have passed through different stages, times, and civilizations, dating as far back as 2500 BC in the pre-Babylonian world of Sumeria and Akkadia. It is also believed to have emerged, in that ancient period, out of the desire among the Sumerian-Akkadian writers to codify, i.e. to commit to writing, information that used to be very important e.g. producing lists of words using different methods of compilation. This is precisely when, where, and how the lexicographic activity started. This is also how African languages, including Hausa, acquired the insight of documenting their lexical resources (Green, 1996, pp. 13 – 14; Ibrahim, 2015, pp. 8 – 9; Ahmed, 2023, p. 61).

The term ‘lexicography’, from which the adjectival form ‘lexicographic’ is formed, is originally from the Greek word lexikographos, itself a combination of lexikos, which means ‘wordbook’, and graphos, which means ‘to scratch, inscribe, or write a word or speech’ (Green, 1996, p. 1). Lexicography entails the writing of dictionaries, be it for practical use or for any other purpose(s) (Svensén, 1993, p. 1; Green, 1996, p. 39; Matthews, 2007, p. 225). However, as Svensén cautions, defining lexicography in this way tends to lay emphasis on the product i.e. the dictionaries when it is quite possible to work on lexicography without engaging in the writing of dictionaries. Thus, in a more inclusive and plausible sense, Svensén posits that lexicography is a branch of Applied Linguistics that is concerned with observing, collecting, selecting, and describing units from the stock of words and word combinations in one or more languages. Syal and Jindal (2015, p. 163) beam more light on what the term lexicography is by postulating that, it is a professional activity with its own established practices and basically involves ‘words’ as well as the theoretical principles required in tackling or explaining the meanings or use of the words.

As a sub-field of linguistics, lexicography deals, partly, with the compilation of words (as the lexemes of a language) for specific needs. Thus, words are the subject matter of lexicography i.e., at the center of any lexicographic activity is the words of a language (Ahmed, 2023, p. 3 & 13). What then are ‘words’? According to Crystal (2008, p. 522):

Words are the physically definable units, which one encounters in a stretch of writing (bounded by spaces), or speech (where identification is more difficult, but where there may be phonological clues to identify boundaries, such as pause, or juncture features. ‘Word’ in this sense is often referred to as the orthographic word (for writing) or the phonological word (for speech).

Several though somewhat related definitions of ‘word(s)’ abound in the linguistic literature because, as Arkadiev and Klamer (2016, p. 1) argue, the notion has proven to be notoriously difficult to define and, as Aronoff and Fudeman (2011, p. 34) also caution, no definition is entirely satisfactory. Sharing their view on the meaning of ‘words’, Haspelmath and Sims (2010, p. 15) draw the distinction that, words are either ‘dictionary words’ or ‘concrete words’, hence they label the former as ‘lexeme’ and the latter as ‘word form’. They argue that, words as dictionary entries carry the core meaning shared by other similar forms. To substantiate the argument, they exemplify the verb form live, as may be found in the array of head entries in typical English dictionaries, as a lexeme having abstract sense and, therefore, carries the core meaning shared by other similar forms like live, lives, lived, and living. They crown their argument by affirming that, in most languages dictionaries are organized according to lexemes.

Methodology

Hausa dictionaries are relatively many, and are also of different types (in both size and content), used for different purposes, and belong to different generations as well. Hausa ideophones are also extremely many with quite a number of them incorporated into some of these dictionaries as head entries. To ascertain how the ideophones are treated as head entries in the dictionaries, this work categorizes the Hausa dictionaries into two generational types namely, the old generation types, and the contemporary generation types. This work adopts tabulation as the approach to data presentation and analysis. In all, two (2) tables are involved, table (1) and table (2) with the former presenting/analyzing data for the sampled old generation dictionaries, and the latter presenting/analyzing data for the sampled contemporary counterparts. Accordingly, three (3) dictionaries from ‘the old’ and four (4) from ‘the contemporary’ are selected for the study. As for the ideophones, thirty (30) out of the over one thousand extracted from Bargery (1934) by Ahmed (2014) are selected as sample. In statistical sense, a minimum of thirty (30) elements suffice as a sample to conduct an empirical study (Emmanuel, 2013, p. 165). The HEL ‘head entry label’ assigned to each of the sampled ideophones in the selected dictionaries forms the basis for ascertaining the lexicographic treatment of the ideophones. Where a particular ideophone does not appear in a dictionary as a head entry, this fact is stated on the tables as NID ‘not in (the) dictionary’, and where an ideophone is not assigned any head entry label in a particular dictionary, such a fact is also indicated on the tables as NEL ‘no entry label (assigned)’. In addition, the work adopts orthographic representation with tone marking and vowel lengthening in presenting and analyzing the sampled data. For ease of reference, the page number (PGN) on which a particular ideophone appears in a particular dictionary is also indicated. Moreover, English glosses for all the ideophones analyzed are also incorporated in the analysis. 

The Notion ‘Dictionary’

In general, dictionaries are reservoirs of the lexical resources of the languages for which they have been compiled, perhaps, surpassed only by the native speakers’ mental lexicon (Ahmed, 2014, p. 1). The term ‘dictionary’ originates from the Medieval Latin word dictionarium or dictionarius, which means a repertory of words or phrases. Thus, dictionary simply refers to any reference book that provides information about the words (or phrases as the case may be) of a language. A dictionary may deal with the individual words of a language or with some specific classes of words. A dictionary provides information about its entry words e.g. in form of spelling, pronunciation and meaning in a systematic form, usually in alphabetical order. Dictionaries vary in both content and size i.e. they could be small or large, monolingual or bilingual etc., reference or specialized, terminological or pedagogical, and so on. More often, apart from defining the head entries, larger dictionaries provide additional information on other linguistic and paralinguistic issues like synonymy, etymology, pictures, etc. (Syal & Jindal, 2015, pp. 163 -169; cf. Ahmed, 2014, pp. 1 & 2).

Hausa Lexicographic Activity

Hausa lexicographic practice dates back to as early as 1790, a time when European explorers and travelers across the West and North African sub-regions began to note down numerals and a few nouns in Hausa, a task that culminated into the more extensive wordlists of Koelle (1854) and Barth (1862/1866). However, a more modern lexicographic activity began with the emergence of Schön (1843), a work published in London by the then Church of Missionary Society. Thereafter, several other Hausa lexicographic publications emerged cutting across four functional areas namely, reference, pedagogy, specialization, and terminology, with Newman and Newman (2020) as the most recent. In their somewhat comprehensive survey of Hausa lexicographic works, Newman and Newman (2001) identified no fewer than fifty-nine (59) lexicographic works, dictionaries inclusive, that have so far been produced for Hausa. According to Schuh (1982), among the finest dictionaries of African languages two, i.e. Bargery (1934) and Abraham (1958), are for the Hausa language (Newman & Newman, 2001; cf. Ahmed, 2014, p. 2; Ahmed, 2023, p. 62).

Hausa Dictionaries

Hausa dictionaries, as those in other languages, are also systematically compiled in form of alphabetically arranged head entries with most of the entries labeled according to the word class or category they belong, in tandem with one of the general conventions of lexicographic practice i.e. labeling a particular entry as a noun, verb, or an adjective, etc.

Since the inception of Hausa lexicographic practice, several dictionaries have been compiled for the language to serve different purposes. Worthy of mention in this work are the seemingly active Hausa-English and Hausa-Hausa dictionaries namely, Henry and Robinson (1913), Bargery (1934), Abraham (1958), Newman and Newman (1977), Awde (1996), CNHN (2006), Newman (2007), Abubakar (2015) and, quite recently, Newman and Newman (2020).

Hausa Ideophones

Linguists often group words in languages into classes based on the morpho-syntactic behaviors the words exhibit (Strazny, 2005; cf. Ahmed, 2014, p. 12). One of such word class in Hausa is the class of ‘ideophones’, as evidenced in (Hausa) grammar/linguistics books e.g. Galadanci (1976), Skinner (1977), Zaria (1980), Newman (2000), Jaggar (2001), and Abubakar (2001), among others. Ideophones are found in all the languages of the world. However, languages differ in the extent they use ideophones. In Hausa and Bura languages for instance, they are used as adjectives, adverbs, and nouns. In Bantu, they are used as subtantivals and adverbials, and as adjectives in Tera (Adamu, 1984, p. 17). In Kanuri, ideophones function as adverbials (Hutchison, 1989, pp. 31 – 38).

Matthews (2007, p. 183) defines, ‘ideophone’ as a term used by Africanists to name a distinct class of forms characterized by phonological structures that tend to be peculiar to them, for example by patterns of sound symbolism, reduplicative structures or distinct tone patterns. A frontline Africanist Doke (1935, p. 118) defines the term as “a vivid representation of an idea in sound, a word often onomatopoeic, which describes a predicate, qualificative or adverb in respect to manner, color, sound, smell, action, state or intensity.” Schlegel (2007) shades more light by asserting that, sometimes ideophones are referred to as ‘or ‘mimetics’ and are found abundantly in Asian and African languages but are very rare in Indo-European languages, and in all these languages they form a distinct class of words definable by phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic criteria. Samarin (1965, pp. 117 & 121), also a frontline , crowns it all by asserting that, African languages are characterized typologically by ideophones, which by count constitute a major part of the total lexicon of these languages, next to nouns and verbs. Newman and Newman (1977, p. xii) affirm this by positing that, ideophones are extremely numerous in Hausa. According to Galadanci (1971, p. 12):

What are normally treated as ideophones in Hausa are utterances marked by distinctive phonological features, describing visual, tactile, auditory, or other sensory experiences. They do not belong to a single syntactic class, but cut across a number of different categories, in that the same individual ideophones may have syntactic behavior that is typical of, say, a dynamic noun and of a simple adverb. This cross-category behavior, however, is itself distinctive and it is therefore convenient to consider together under the heading ‘ideophone’, all those words that have such cross-category behavior.

Galadanci (1971, p. 13) exemplifies words like bìrjík ‘abundantly’, shár ‘very greenish’, hái}àn ‘exceedingly’, dàgàjèejèe ‘sth. messy-looking, fàrcák ‘run like a strike of lightening’, gàndàndàn ‘giant-looking’, bùs ‘extremely unpleasant smell’, gwàngwàràn ‘sound of a heavy but empty falling object’, }ìi}àm ‘stand silently and listlessly’, and cákwái ‘very sweet’ as typical Hausa ideophones:

An excursion, by the present work, into one of the very few Hausa-Hausa (monolingual) dictionaries and other selected Hausa-English (bilingual) dictionaries discovered that among the lexemes enlisted as head entries (in the dictionaries) are words belonging to the class of ideophones. For example, in Bargery (1934) a lone about (i.e. plus or minus) one thousand (1000) ideophones were discovered to have been incorporated as integral parts of the dictionary’s head entries, but are not treated/labeled as such in the dictionary, instead they are labeled as ‘Adv’ i.e. ‘Adverbs/Adverbials’ (Ahmed, 2014). The same class of lexemes may have been treated similarly in other Hausa dictionaries contemporaneous to Bargery, for example Abraham (1958). Thus, in the context of this work, this category of Hausa dictionaries is considered as the ‘old generation dictionaries’, in tandem with the historical period they emerged on the Hausa lexicographic scene. Interestingly, the same stuff of head entries mostly labeled ‘id’ or ‘idph’ i.e. ‘ideophone’ across Hausa dictionaries that emerged after the old generation types i.e. from the late seventies to the present day, for example Newman and Newman (1977) and others. These Hausa dictionaries are viewed, in this work, as ‘contemporary generation (Hausa) dictionaries’. Hence, the claim in the study that the two categories of Hausa dictionaries – the old and the contemporary – differ in the way they treat/label ideophones as ‘head entries’. In other words, Hausa ideophones as head entries are treated or labeled differently by the two generations of Hausa dictionaries. This is mainly what the study sets out to ascertain. Consider tables (1) and (2) below:

TABLE 1: The Old Approach to Lexicographic Treatment of Hausa Ideophones Exemplified and Analyzed 

S/N	Ideophone	Old Approach						Gloss
		Henry & Robinson (1913)		Bargery (1934)		Abraham (1958)
		HEL	PGN	HEL	PGN	HEL	PGN
1.	bàzàr-bàzàr	NID	-	Adv	100	NEL	94	in rags
2.	Bìrís	NID	-	Adv	111	Adv	104	in great quantity
3.	Bìrjík	NID	-	Adv	111	Adv	104	in abundance
4.	cák	NID	-	Adv	146	NEL	130	completely
5.	càncák	NID	-	Adv	149	NEL	132	completely
6.	cárkwái	NID	-	Adv	152	NEL	134	emphasizes pains, sweetness, sufficiency
7.	dá~ás/dà~às	NID	-	Adv	175	NEL	159	firmly/ emphasizes shortness
8.	dá}áu	NID	-	Adv	196	Adv	174	emphasizes hardness/ firmness
9.	dúmúu-dùmùu	NID	-	Adv	277	Adv	233	red-handed
10.	fácál(-fácál)	NID	-	Adv	287	NEL	240	sound of something falling into shallow water
11.	fát/*fet	NEL	87	Adv	312	Adv	259	completely (of whiteness) etc.
12.	fátá-fátá	NEL	86	Adv	312	NEL	260	completely (of driving off), etc.
13.	hùlùlù(u)	NID	-	Adv	468	NEL	391	abundantly/ in great quantity or number
14.	Jágáb	NID	-	Adv	485	Adv	412	very wet
15.	kácá-kácá/ *kacha kacha	NEL	157	Adv	516	Adv	439	very untidy, etc.
16.	}éeméemée	NEL	188	Adv	596	NID	-	blunt refusal
17.	}írín/*}erin/ *}irim	NEL	194	Adv	610	NID	-	very black/dark
18.	kwál/}wál	NID	-	Adv	671/2	Adv	459	well washed/very white/ snow-white
19.	Láu	Adv	230	Adv	722	NEL	616	quite well
20.	Lílís	NID	-	Adv	727	Adv	620	well pounded/ thrashed
21.	rà]à]à	NID	-	Adv	829	Adv	713	crackling sound of bush/forest fire
22.	ràk(w)àcàm	NID	-	Adv	835	Adv	717	very untidy/ littered/ crowded, etc.
23.	ràmbàtsàu(-ai)	NID	-	Adv	837	Adv	719	untidy/ littered/in excess
24.	Sák	NID	-	Adv	884	Adv	765	straight away in one direction, etc.
25.	sákáyáu	NID	-	Adv	886	Adv	768	very light in weight
26.	sàmàmà	NID	-	Adv	892	Adv	778	emphasizes the sound of movement of a large body of people or animals
27.	tángárán/m	NID	-	Adv	990	Adv	849	emphasizes clarity of sight
28.	Tìnjím	NEL	366	Adv	1014	Adv	866	emphasizes abundance
29.	Tsáf	NID	-	Adv	1022	Adv	871	emphasizes thorough cleaning/ fullness
30.	Wúf	NEL	402	Adv	1092	NEL	938	emphasizes sudden action e.g. standing up

 

TABLE 2: The Contemporary Trend in Lexicographic Treatment of Hausa Ideophones Exemplified and Analyzed

S/N	Ideophone	Contemporary Trend								Gloss
		Newman & Newman (1977)		CNHN ( 2006)		Newman (2007)		Newman & Newman (2020)
		HEL	PGN	HEL	PGN	HEL	PGN	HEL	PGN
1.	bàzàr-bàzàr	Id	12	a-k	43	NID	-	NID	-	in rags
2.	bìrís	Id	13	NID	-	NID	-	NID	-	in great quantity
3.	bìrjík	Id	13	a-k	48	id	21	idph	27	in abundance
4.	cák	Id	18	b-fl	69	id	31	idph	38	completely
5.	càncák	Id	18	b-fl	71	NID	-	NID	-	completely
6.	cárkwái	Id	19	a-k	72	id	32	idph	39	emphasizes pains, sweetness, sufficiency
7.	dá~ás/dà~às	Id	22	a-k	83	NID	-	idph	45	firmly/ emphasizes shortness
8.	dá}áu	Id	24	b-fl	89	NID	-	NID	-	emphasizes hardness/ firmness
9.	dúmúu-dùmùu	Id	29	a-k	112	id	48	idph	58	red-handed
10.	fácál(-fácál)	Id	33	a-k	129	id	56	idph	67	sound of something falling into shallow water
11.	fát	Id	36	a-k	137	id	61	idph	72	completely (of whiteness), etc.
12.	fátá-fátá	Id	36	a-k	137	id	61	idph	72	completely (of driving off), etc.
13.	hùlùlù(u)	Id	53	a-k	202	id	90	idph	107	abundantly/ in great quantity or number
14.	jágáb	Id	56	b-fl	210	id	96	idph	112	very wet
15.	kácá-kácá/ *kacha kacha	Id	59	b-fl	222	id	102	idph	120	very untidy, etc.
16.	}éeméemée	Id	76	b-fl	280	id	129	idph	152	blunt refusal
17.	}írín/*}erin/ *}irim	Id	76	a-k	282	id	130	idph	154	very black/dark
18.	kwál/}wál	Id	71	a-k	290	id	134	idph	158	well washed/very white/ snow-white
19.	láu	Id	81	a-k	303	NID	-	NID	-	quite well
20.	lilis	Id	82	b-fl	306	id	140	idph	166	well pounded/ thrashed
21.	rà]à]à	Id	97	b-fl	363	id	164	idph	194	crackling sound of bush/forest fire
22.	ràk(w)àcàm	Id	98	a-k	365	id	166	idph	196	very untidy/ littered/ crowded, etc.
23.	ràmbàtsàu(-ai)	Id	98	a-k	366	NID	-	NID	-	untidy/ littered/in excess
24.	sák	Id	104	a-k	383	id	175	idph	207	straight away in one direction, etc.
25.	sákáyáu	Id	104	a-k	384	id	176	idph	208	very light in weight
26.	sàmàmà	Id	105	b-fl	386	id	177	idph	209	emphasizes the sound of movement of a large body of people or animals
27.	tángárán/m	Id	117	b-fl	426	id	197	idph	232	emphasizes clarity of sight
28.	tìnjím	Id	121	a-k	437	id	202	idph	238	emphasizes abundance
29.	tsáf	Id	122	a-k	449	id	203	idph	240	emphasizes thorough cleaning/ fullness
30.	wúf	Id	133	a-k	473	id	220	idph	260	emphasizes sudden action e.g. standing up

Note that, in tables (1) and (2) above, items marked with asterisk (*) reflect the orthographic practice of the time the dictionary in which the items occur as head entries were compiled.

Discussion

Tables (1) and (2) above analyze the lexicographic treatment of Hausa ideophones in the two divides of Hausa dictionaries. Both tables, as could be observed, comprise equal number of the same items (ideophones). Whereas table (1) focuses on the old generation dictionaries, table (2) on the other hand looks at the contemporary generation counterparts. 

From table (1) above, it is vivid that out of the thirty (30) sampled ideophones, in Henry and Robinson (1913), only one is labeled Adv; seven others are marked NEL for having no entry label while the majority (twenty-two in number) are marked NID because they are not in the dictionary as head entries. In Bargery (1934), however, all the sampled ideophones occur as head entries thus are all labeled Adv. In Abraham (1958), whereas eighteen of the total sample are labeled adv (same as Adv), ten others are marked NEL for not bearing entry labels, and the remaining two are marked NID for not being in the dictionary as head entries.

It is equally clear from table (2) above that, all of the thirty (30) ideophones used as samples in this study occur in Newman and Newman (1977) as head entries with each labeled id. The scenario is slightly different in CNHN (2006), as one ideophone is marked NID because it is not in the dictionary as head entry; ten others are treated as adverbs, hence the Hausa label ‘b-fl’, i.e. ‘bayanin fi’ili’, which means ‘modifier of verb’ or ‘adverb’ while the majority (nineteen in number) are labeled a-k i.e. ‘amsa-kama’, which means ‘ideophone(s)’. In Newman (2007), except in the case of seven ideophones that are marked NID ‘not in the dictionary (as head entries)’, all others that occur as head entries are labeled id. In Abraham (1958), whereas eighteen of the total ideophones used as samples are labeled adv (same as Adv), ten others are marked NEL because none bear any entry label, and the remaining two are marked NID for not being in the dictionary as head entries.

Conclusion and Findings

From the onset, this work was set out to ascertain how the Hausa ideophones, as a grammatically distinct class of words, are lexicographically treated. To achieve this, thirty Hausa ideophonic words were used as sample with seven Hausa dictionaries comprising one monolingual i.e. the Hausa-Hausa type and six bilingual i.e. the Hausa-English types also selected for the study. The selected dictionaries were further split into two generational types i.e. the old generation types as well as the contemporary generation types. The labels assigned to the ideophones that occur as head entries in the particular dictionaries were the major determinants of how the ideophones are lexicographically treated across the two generational divides of the dictionaries. Finally, the following major findings are made by the study:

1.  Hausa ideophones that occur as head entries in the old generation Hausa dictionaries are either not labeled at all or are mostly treated not as ideophones but rather as adverbs (Adv/adv), perhaps, because at the time these dictionaries were compiled, ideophonic words, especially in African languages generally, were not yet recognized as a grammatically distinct class of words. This particular finding represents the old approaches to the lexicographic treatment of Hausa ideophones.

2.  In the contemporary generation Hausa dictionaries, the ideophonic words that occur as head entries are treated not as adverbs but mostly as ideophones (id/idph). The reason is not farfetched; at the time dictionaries in this cluster were compiled, ideophonic words across African languages have already gained recognition as a grammatically distinct class of words and, therefore, are named and labeled accordingly in most if not all subsequent grammatical and/or linguistic discussions. This particular finding demonstrates the contemporary trend in the lexicographic treatment of Hausa ideophones.

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