Kejom (Babanki) ideophones

International audience This study identifies and describes ideophones used in Babanki (henceforth Kejom as the people prefer to call themselves and their language), a Centre Ring Grassfields Bantu language of Northwest Cameroon. The study of ideophones or marked words that depict sensory imagery (Dingemanse 2011) in Africa has expanded in recent years (Blench 2010) but our knowledge of this class of words in Grassfields Bantu languages is restricted with only a limited reference to ideophones in the literature on these languages (Blench (2010) on Yamba and Limbum, Tamanji (2009) on Bafut and Akumbu & Fogwe (2012) on Babanki). The properties of Kejom ideophones are examined in this paper and it is concluded that they are marked due to their divergent phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. It is realized that the ideophones vividly depict one or more sensory events, ranging from sight to emotion.