| Summary: | This is an investigation into an unusual type of lexeme in Lai Chin, the ideophone. Similar items in other languages have gone by other names elsewhere: "expressives" in Semai (Diffloth 1976, 1979), as well as "phonaesthetic words" (Henderson 1965), "impressifs" (Durand 1961), and "descriptive words" (various SIL linguists).1 They have three characteristics setting them apart as a class. First, and most salient, is their partially reduplicative phonology, e.g. hlua?-ma7, phik-phek, tier-tlur, fitp-fiap.
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