Ideophones – imitative words using the stream of speech to simulate/depict the rise and fall of sensory perceptions and emotions and temporal experiences of completiveness, instantaneousness, and repetitiveness – have been characterized as semantically empty and context-dependent. The research reported here tested a simple schematic for the semantic categories of Pastaza Kichwa ideophones by tracking neurological responses to ideophones categorized as VISUAL, MOTION, and SOUND. Seventeen native speakers of Pastaza Kichwa listened to audio clips of ideophones extracted from sentential contexts. Subjects’ neural activity was assessed using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Results demonstrate that these posited semantic categories activate areas of the brain associated with visualization, motion, and sound processing and production, respectively. This suggests that these ideophones convey semantic information related to these concepts, independent of context. This contrasts with what would be expected by theories suggesting that ideophones on their own are semantically empty. The data give rise to questions regarding whether any language contains only sound ideophones that do not carry additional sensory information and whether ideophones in previous studies treated strictly as sound ideophones might require greater specification of their semantics, specifically from a multisensorial perspective.

假音——使用语音流来模拟/描述感官知觉和情绪的兴衰以及完整性、瞬时性和重复性的时间体验的模仿词——被认为是语义空洞和依赖于上下文的。这里报告的研究通过跟踪对视觉、运动和声音分类的意念音的神经反应，测试了 Pastaza Kichwa 意念音的语义类别的简单示意图。17 名以帕斯塔扎基奇瓦语为母语的人聆听了从句子上下文中提取的录音音的音频片段。使用功能性近红外光谱评估受试者的神经活动。结果表明，这些假定的语义类别分别激活与可视化、运动、声音处理和产生相关的大脑区域。这表明这些表意音素传达与这些概念相关的语义信息，与上下文无关。这与理论所预期的结果形成鲜明对比，这些理论认为表意音素本身在语义上是空的。这些数据引发了这样的问题：任何语言是否只包含不携带额外感官信息的声音意音素，以及先前研究中严格视为声音意音素的意音素是否可能需要对其语义进行更详细的说明，特别是从多感官的角度来看。