Nuckolls studies the occurrence of sound-symbolic words - words that bear resemblance to phenomena they attempt to describe - in an Ecuadorian dialect of Quechua, a major South American language. She explores how the speakers describe everyday experience and how sound-symbolism is integral to their way of thinking and speaking.
The book speaks for the value of intensively conducted linguistic field research, evocatively encourages our reassessments of dichotomic theories about language, and will doubtless occupy quite a unique place on the shelves of Quechua studies for some years to come.
