The segmentals and suprasegmentals of ideophones

Abstract This chapter offers a comprehensive cross-linguistic overview of the segmental and suprasegmental features that characterize ideophones—a term that encompasses both sound and cross-modal mimetics. Drawing on data from one hundred languages, it explores how ideophones exploit the phonological resources of language through the use of marked phonemes, phonotactics, prosody, sound modifications, morphophonological processes, and phonesthemes. These features are not arbitrary but iconically motivated, enhancing the expressive and depictive force of ideophones. Their frequent co-occurrence with gestures, gaze, and prosodic modulations also highlights their multimodal nature and communicative saliency. The chapter shows that what makes ideophones distinctive is not simply the presence of isolated or exceptional features, but rather the consistent clustering of recurrent and typologically salient characteristics. This constellation of properties allows ideophones to form a coherent and compact semantic category of words with strong iconic grounding, structural uniqueness, and communicative impact across linguistic and cultural contexts.