Mimetics in Japanese comprise both onomatopoeic expressions (phonomimes) and other ideophones (phenomimes; psychomimes), which do not imitate acoustic phenomena. They can appear in various syntactic positions and adopt the syntactic functions of nouns in a referential phrase, predicates, attributes in a noun phrase and adverbs, with the latter being the most common usage. Since the stem of mimetic expressions such as SUTON ("thump"), KIRARI ("flash"), KYAAA ("Aaaah!") or GAN-GAN ("pounding") cannot be altered and common suffixes such as /N/, /RI/ and /Q/ (glottal stop) cannot be inflected, the syntactic function of mimetics in Japanese is determined by their position in the sentence and the particles (postpositions) used to indicate their function within a larger constituent. In colloquial speech, these particles may also be omitted, which sometimes results in the syntactic position being the only indicator of the syntactic function. However, when contrasting the grammatical usage of mimetics in data sources from various speech registers, it becomes apparent that not all mimetics are used with all particles and in all syntactic positions. Moreover, some mimetics may be combined with certain particles in idiomatic contexts, but would be used differently in spontaneous speech. For this reason, it is not surprising that opinions vary greatly when it comes to determining the distribution of individual mimetics, and mimetics as a class. This often results in L2 learners of Japanese being confused by contradictory statements in dictionaries and textbooks, which may not necessarily reflect the actual usage of mimetics in spoken Japanese and thus constitute an obstacle to effective language learning. The focus of this thesis is a description of the variable use of selected mimetics in attributive contexts, to shed light on the factors underlying the variation, and to establish whether a language change has been taking place in recent years. Empirical data collected from dictionaries, corpora, surveys and interviews shows that sociolinguistic factors such as gender, age and media exposure may influence the grammatical preferences of native speakers and their perception of mimetics. For this reason, both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors have to be taken into account in order to establish a grammatical framework for mimetics in Japanese.

Les prédicats idéophoniques serbes représentent une classe de mots très courante, surtout dans la langue orale. Ces mots, qui s'apparentent par leur forme morphologique des idéophones d'une part, et qui sont dotés d’une fonction prédicative de l'autre, sont souvent classés parmi les interjections. Cependant, leur fonctionnement n'est pas celui des interjections. Le présent travail de thèse propose une première investigation sur ces formes, encore très peu étudiées dans la langue serbe. La thèse commence par une définition de la classe des prédicats idéophoniques, leur rapport avec les interjections, les onomatopées et les verbes. La partie centrale est consacrée à l'étude syntactico-sémantique de chacun de 32 prédicats idéophoniques répertoriés en serbe moderne : dans la littérature, la presse et sur Internet. Une partie synthétique présente les réflexions plus générales sur les particularités phonologiques de ces formes, les spécificités de la réalisation de leurs composants et des constructions qu'elles intègrent, de même que les problèmes de la prédication et de la prédication seconde que posent certaines formes. Sont étudiées aussi les formes synonymes et les particularités de dérivation des verbes issus d'idéophones. Une analyse sémantique plus affinée permet de différencier les idéophones à sémantique très proche, qui se situent surtout dans le domaine de « tomber » ou dans celui de « frapper ». Une conclusion générale clôt la thèse en reprenant les résultats obtenus et fait quelques comparaisons avec le fonctionnement de ces formes en russe, ce qui permet de situer la présente étude dans une perspective typologique. / Serbian predicative ideophones represent a very frequent class of words in Serbian, especially in conversational language. These words that have a morphological form of the ideophone on the one hand and a predicative function on the other, are often classified as interjections. However, these words dont have a fonction of interjection.This thesis work proposes the first investigation of these words, that are still poorly studied in the Serbian language. The thesis begins with a definition of the class of predicative ideophones, their relation to interjections, onomatopeia and verbs. The central part is dedicated to the syntactico-semantic analyses of 32 predicative ideophones identified in modern Serbian language : in the literature, the press and on the Internet. A synthetic part presents the more general reflections about the phonological particularity of these forms, the specificity of the realization of their components and the constructions that these forms integrate, as well as the predicate and the second predication in some forms. Synonymous forms and derivation of verbs from ideophones are also studied. A more refined semantic analysis allows to differentiate ideophones of very close meaning, specially for the expression of « falling » or « hitting ». In the main conclusion are made some comparisons with the function of predicative ideophones in the Russian language. So the present study may be situated in a typological perspective.

The relationship between ideophones and gestures has only recently been studied and is not yet completely understood. The topic has been specifically addressed by Kita (1993), Klassen (1998), Dingemanse (2013), Mihas (2013), and Reiter (2013). Yet there has been little focus on onomatopoeic ideophones. Onomatopoeic ideophones have been set aside as different by many previous researchers (Klassen, 1998, pp. 28-31; Kilian-Hatz, 2001, pp. 161-163; Dingemanse, 2011, pp. 131, 165-167; Mihas, 2012, pp. 327-329; Reiter, 2013, pp. 9-10, 308). Being stigmatized as simple, they have been labeled as "sound mimicking words" (McGregor, 2002, p. 341), "non-linguistic sounds" (Güldemann, 2008, p. 283), or "imitative sounds" (Hinton et al., 1994, §2.1). This thesis specifically addresses the relationship between onomatopoeic ideophones and gestures in Pastaza Quichua (PQ). My data acquired from primary and secondary sources, consists of 69 interactions, comprising eight hours of video recordings collected in Tena, Ecuador. These recordings include traditional narratives, personal experience tellings, elicited descriptions of nature, short didactic explanations, and folksongs. My methodology consists of close examination, classification, and tagging of 435 ideophones in the PQ data for sensory class and gestural accompaniment, using McNeill's (1992) typology. This thesis demonstrates that onomatopoeic ideophones do not have the same relationship with gestures that synesthetic ideophones do. Synesthetic ideophones are consistently accompanied by gestures (94.4% of the time) while onomatopoeic ideophones are much less likely to be accompanied by gestures (27.0% of the time). The lack of gestures occurring with onomatopoeic ideophones is striking given that PQ speakers seem to be constantly gesturing during speech. The PQ data supports previous observations that most gestures accompanying ideophones are iconic (Kunene, 1965; Dingemanse, 2013; Reiter, 2013; Mihas, 2013; Kita, 1993). The data also supports McNeill's (2007, p. 11) statement that gestures are used to make an image more real and that repetition can lead to fading gestures. However, it challenges his prediction that a minimal departure from context is the cause of a conspicuous lack of gesture. Sensory type, that is whether an ideophone is onomatopoeic or not, seems to be the most important factor in predicting gestural behavior. This paper also contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between ideophones and gestures and, ultimately, between language and gesture.

Ideophones are “marked words that vividly depict sensory events” (Dingemanse, 2009, p. 1). They often occur with gesture, but the link between the two is not yet fully understood. McNeill (1992) and Streeck (2008) have proposed classification schemas for gesture, and Nuckolls (2019) is developing a framework for the categorization of ideophones. This thesis categorizes ideophone-gesture composites using a combination of all three of these frameworks. I used data from Quechua RealWords, an online video corpus of 221 ideophones of Pastaza Quichua elicited by students and faculty at the Andes and Amazon Field School in Ecuador. I analyzed video clips of composite utterances and classified them according to McNeill’s, Streeck’s, and Nuckolls’s classification systems. This thesis demonstrates how using these three classification systems together allows for a more holistic analysis of ideophone-gesture composites as well as for the identification of certain patterns in the data. In this case, these were the existence of deictic + beat gestures and the pairing of sound-only ideophones with head gestures rather than with hand gestures. This thesis also suggests that head gestures may be classified using Streeckian and McNeillian categories and it points out ways in which beats paired with Quichua ideophones deviate from the criteria put forth by McNeill.

Ideofoner i svenska har inte studerats i någon större utsträckning. Fenomenet ideofoner har uppmärksammats mer i andra språk, främst i språk i delar av Asien och Afrika. Traditionellt har de betraktats som en underkategori till interjektioner. Syftet med denna undersökning är att ta reda på hur ideofoner används i det svenska språket. För detta ändamål sammanställdes en lista på 20 vanliga svenska ideofoner. Därefter genomfördes en korpusundersökning på dessa ideofoner i korpusar bestående av skönlitterär text. Det totala antalet förekomster för varje ideofon noterades, samt antalet förekomster inom tre olika användningskategorier: Substantiv, Interjektioner och Övrigt. En likadan undersökning genomfördes därefter i en korpus bestående av barnbokstext och litteratur på lättläst svenska, för att se huruvida användningen av ideofoner skiljde sig åt här jämfört med i skönlitterär text. En majoritet av de undersökta ideofonerna förekom mer som substantiv i båda undersökningarna. Fördelningen av förekomster i de olika kategorierna var dock ojämnare i den skönlitterära korpusen, med en större andel substantivförekomster jämfört med korpusen med barnbokstext och litteratur på lättläst svenska. / Ideophones in Swedish have not been studied to any great extent. The phenomenon of ideophones has received more attention in other languages, mainly in languages in parts of Asia and Africa. Traditionally, they have been regarded as a subcategory of interjections. The purpose of this study is to find out how ideophones are used in the Swedish language. For this purpose, a list of 20 common Swedish ideophones was compiled. Subsequently, a corpus survey in corpora consisting of fiction literature was performed of the 20 ideophones. The total number of occurrences for each ideophone was noted, as well as the number of occurrences within three different groups of use: Nouns, Interjections and Other. A similar survey was then conducted in a corpus consisting of children's literature and literature in simple Swedish, to see whether the use of ideophones differed here compared to in fiction literature. It turned out that a majority of the examined ideophones occur mostly as nouns in both surveys. The distribution of occurrences in the different categories, however, was more uneven in the literary corpus, with a larger proportion of nouns compared to the corpus with children's literature and literature in simple Swedish.

Thesis (M. A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2002 / Refer to the document

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2002 / Refer to document

<p>The focus of this essay is on examining the meanings of the <em>onomatopoeia</em> (sound imitating words) <em>snap, crack</em> and <em>pop</em>. Previous studies on onomatopoeia and sound symbolism are used to define the terms and create a model for an alternative categorization of these meanings. This model is then applied in a corpus study, conducted on the COCA (Corpus Of Contemporary American English) and BYU-BNC (The British National Corpus) corpora, to find a way to more accurately describe the meanings and functions of these words.  For this purpose the context in which <em>snap, crack</em> and<em> pop</em> are used is also addressed by observing how frequently they occur in formal and informal texts and which adjectives and adverbs frequently modify them. In the study it was discovered that these three words took on many different meanings that would be hard to list separately in a dictionary. These meanings did follow a pattern linked to the properties associated with the word. The study found <em>snap, crack and pop</em> to be informal words with a tendency to add emotion or effect to a statement. It is therefore concluded that sorting onomatopoeia by sound and non sound-related meaning and describing the informal characteristics of these words leads to a greater understanding of how they are used.</p><p> </p><p>Keywords: Arbitrariness, <em>crack</em>, emotive, ideophones, mimetics, mimes, non-arbitrariness, onomatopoeia, phenomimes, phonomimes, <em>pop</em>, psychomimes, register, semantics, <em>snap</em>, sound symbolism and style.</p>

Ideofoner används flitigt i japanska och är viktiga att lära sig men bjuder på stora svårigheter för andraspråkstalare. Den här studien undersöker vilka sammanhang japanska ideofoner används i, specifikt vilka verb som ofta modifieras av ideofoner och vilka dessa ideofoner är. En japansk bloggkorpus på 5,5 miljarder tokens delades upp i tokens, ordklasstaggades, dependensparsades och söktes igenom. Vid en signifikansnivå på 0,001 hittades 2398 verb som ofta modifieras av ideofoner och 52719 kollokationer av verb och ideofoner, medan antalet unika ideofoner var 756. Detta visar att ideofoner används i en stor mängd sammanhang där det finns en relation mellan ideofon och verb. De 20 högst rankade kollokationerna undersöktes mer ingående och innehöll till största delen skildringar av sinnesintryck som är ovanliga att uttrycka med ideofoner i många språk, och som därmed kan vara svåra för många andraspråkstalare. / Ideophones are widely used in Japanese and are important to learn, but present big challenges for L2 speakers. This study investigates the contexts that ideophones in Japanese occur in, specifically what verbs are often modified by ideophones and those ideophones. A Japanese blog corpus consisting of 5.5 billion tokens was split up into tokens, tagged with part of speech and dependency relations and then searched. At a significance level of 0.001, 2398 verbs were found to often be modified by ideophones, and 52179 collocations of verbs and ideophones were found. The number of unique ideophones were 756. This shows that ideophones are used in many contexts where there is a relationship between ideophone and verb. The 20 highest ranked collocations were examined. Most contained depictions of sensory imagery normally not expressed by ideophones in many languages, and which might therefore be difficult for many L2 speakers.

Japanese is a language rich in onomatopoeic and mimetic words, words that mimic sounds and other phenomena with their form. They are an integral part of the language and are used in nearly all situations, they also pose their own peculiar challenge to both learners and translators of Japanese. This study examines the Japanese onomatopoeic and mimetic words in the novel Sensei no kaban by Hiromi Kawakami, and their translations in its Finnish translation, to determine what techniques are most commonly used and why? As Finnish is also said to have a rich onomatopoeic and mimetic vocabulary, the frequency at which these terms are translated into equivalent onomatopoeic or mimetic words is also examined. The results show that the majority of the Japanese onomatopoeic and mimetic words, most of which function as adverbs, are translated as adverbs or verbs or they are completely omitted. Exactly a quarter of the examined cases have been translated using onomatopoeic or mimetic words, most of which are verbs.