Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

On the ordering of elements in ideophonic echo-words versus prosaic dvandva compounds, with special reference to Korean and Japanese

  • Published:
Journal of East Asian Linguistics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Building on Childs’s (Pragmat Soc 5(3):341–354, 2014) proposal that skewed phonotactic distributions provide a legitimate resource for expressiveness in ideophones, often described as iconic words, this study examines whether there are differences in element ordering between ideophonic echo-words and prosaic dvandva compounds, with special reference to Korean and Japanese. Measured against Cooper and Ross’s (in: Papers from the parasession on functionalism, Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, pp 63–111, 1975) claimed-to-be-universal phonological constraints for the ordering of conjoined elements pertaining to element-initial consonants and vowels, the study reveals that both Korean and Japanese data comply with the constraints in general. However, in Korean, echo-words are significantly different from dvandva compounds in their compliance with the consonant constraint while they are not so with the vowel constraint. In reverse, echo-words and dvandva compounds in Japanese show a significant difference in their compliance with the vowel constraint but not with the consonant constraint. The findings provide quantitative evidence for the cross-linguistic applicability of the proposed phonological principles for element ordering and the language-specific phonotactic deviance of ideophones vis-à-vis the matrix language for the preferred ordering patterns.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Akita, Kimi. 2008. Phonosemantic evidence for the mimetic stratum in the Japanese lexicon. Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS) 34(1): 1–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Akita, Kimi. 2011. Toward a phonosemantic definition of iconic words. In Semblance and signification [Iconicity in language and literature 10], ed. Pascal Michelucci, Olga Fischer, and Christina Ljungberg, 3–18. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amanuma, Yasushi (ed.). 1974. Giongo/gitaigo jiten [A dictionary of mimetic words]. Tokyo: Tokyodo.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arcodia, Giorgio Francesco. 2010. Coordinating compounds. Language and Linguistics Compass 4(9): 863–873.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Asano, Tsuruko (ed.). 1978. Giongo/gitaigo jiten [A dictionary of mimetic words]. Tokyo: Kadokawa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Childs, Tucker G. 2014. Constraints on violating constraints: How languages reconcile the twin dicta of ‘Be different’ and ‘Be recognizably language’. Pragmatics and Society 5(3): 341–354.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, William E., and John. R. Ross. 1975. World order. In Papers from the parasession on functionalism, ed. Robin E. Grossman, L. James San, and Timothy J. Vance, 63–111. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.

  • Dienhart, John M. 1999. Stress in reduplicative compounds: Mish-mash or hocus-pocus? American Speech 74(1): 3–37.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diffloth, Gerard. 1994. I: big, a: small. In Sound symbolism, ed. Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols, and John J. Ohala, 76–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dingemanse, Mark. 2011. Ezra Pound among the Mawu: Ideophones and iconicity in Siwu. In Semblance and signification [Iconicity in language and literature 10], ed. Pascal Michelucci, Olga Fischer, and Christina Ljungberg, 39–54. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Dingemanse, Mark, Will Schuerman, Eva Reinisch, Sylvia Tufvesson, and Holger Mitterer. 2016. What sound symbolism can and cannot do: Testing the iconicity of ideophones from five languages. Language 92(2): e117–e133.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Emeneau, M.B. 1938. An echo-word motif in Dravidian folk-tales. Journal of the American Oriental Society 58(4): 553–570.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Emeneau, M.B. 1969. Onomatopoetics in the Indian linguistic area. Language 45(2): 274–299.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foley, James. 1972. Rule precursors and phonological change by meta-rule. In Linguistic change and generative theory, ed. Robert P. Stockwell and Ronald K. S. Macaulay, 96–100. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

  • Garrigues, Stephen. 1995. Mimetic parallels in Korean and Japanese. Studies in Language 19(2): 359–398.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hamano, Shoko. 1998. The sound symbolic system of Japanese. Stanford: CSLI.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamano, Shoko. 2014. Nihongo no onomatope [Onomatopeia in Japanese: Sound symbolism and structure]. Tokyo: Kuroshio.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hayata, Teruhiro. 1977. Tsuigo-no on’inkaiso [On phonological hierarchies for binomials]. Bungaku Kenkyu 74: 123–152.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hida, Yoshifumi, and Hideko Asada. 2002. Gendai giongo gitaigo yōhō jiten [A usage dictionary of modern mimetic words]. Tokyo: Tokyodo.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hooper, Joan B. 1976. An introduction to natural generative phonology. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jun, Jongho. 1994. Metrical weight consistency in Korean partial reduplication. Phonology 11(1): 69–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jung, Dong Hwan. 1991. Kwuke hapsengeuy uymikwankye yenkwu [A study of semantic relations of compound words in Korean]. Ph.D. dissertation, Konkuk University.

  • Kakehi, Hisao, Ikuhiro Tamori, and Lawrence Schourup. 1996. Dictionary of iconic expressions in Japanese. 2 vols. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

  • Kasuya, Hideki, Hisayoshi Suzuki, and Ken’ichi Kido. 1968. Nenrei, seibetsu-ni-yoru nihongo go-boin-no picchi shuuhasuu-to horumanto shuuhasuu-no henka [Changes in pitch and first three formant frequencies of five Japanese vowels with age and sex of speakers]. Journal of Acoustic Society of Japan 24: 355–364.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaist Raw Corpus. 1997. http://semanticweb.kaist.ac.kr/home/index.php/Corpus1. Accessed 10 May 2017.

  • Kwon, Nahyun. 2015. The natural motivation of sound symbolism. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Queensland.

  • Kwon, Nahyun. 2018. Iconicity correlated with vowel harmony in Korean ideophones. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology 9(1): 1–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kwon, Nahyun. to appear. “A theoretical extension of Ohala’s frequency code hypothesis.” In Sound symbolism in the history of thought, ed. Luca Nobile. Philadelphia/Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

  • Labrune, Laurence. 2006. Patterns of phonemic preferences in Japanese non-headed binary compounds: What waa-puro, are-kore and mecha-kucha have in common. Gengo Kenkyu 129: 3–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1982. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Larsen, Darrell, and Jeffrey Heinz. 2012. Neutral vowels in sound-symbolic vowel harmony in Korean. Phonology 29(3): 433–464.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, Jin-Seong. 1992. Phonology and sound symbolism of Korean ideophones. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University.

  • Maduka, Omen N. 1988. Size and shape ideophones in Nembe: A phonosemantic analysis. Studies in African Linguistics 19(1): 93–113.

    Google Scholar 

  • Malkiel, Yakov. 1959. Studies in irreversible binomials. Lingua 8: 113–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marchand, Hans. 1969. The categories and types of present-day English word-formation. 2nd ed. Munich: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung.

    Google Scholar 

  • Murata, Tadao. 1984. Japanese sound hierarchy based on artificial onomatopoeia. Gengo Kenkyu 85: 68–90.

    Google Scholar 

  • Murata, Tadao. 1989. On English sound hierarchy—Based on the research in Britain —. Bulletin of the Kyushu Institute of Technology 37: 61–70.

    Google Scholar 

  • Murata, Tadao. 1990. On irreversible freezes. In Proceedings of the XIVth international congress of linguists, ed. Werner Bahner,‎ Joachim Schildt‎ and Dieter Viehweger, 2403–2406. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

  • Nasu, Akio. 2015. The phonological lexicon and mimetic phonology. In Handbook of Japanese phonetics and phonology, ed. Haruo Kubozono, 253–288. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nihon kokugo daijiten, 2nd edition. 2000. Tokyo: Shogakukan.

  • Oakeshott-Taylor, John. 1984. Phonetic factors in word order. Phonetica 41: 226–237.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ohala, John J. 1994. The frequency code underlies the sound-symbolic use of voice pitch. In Sound symbolism, ed. Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols, and John J. Ohala, 325–347. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ono, Masahiro (ed.). 2007. Giongo/gitaigo 4500: Nihongo onomatope jiten [4500 mimetic words: A dictionary of Japanese onomatopoeia]. Tokyo: Shogakukan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pinker, Steven, and David Birdsong. 1979. Speakers’ sensitivity to rules of frozen word order. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 18: 497–508.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pordány, László. 1986. Irreversible binomials in Hungarian. Acta Linguistica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 36(1/4): 151–179.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sapir, Edward. 1929. A study in phonetic symbolism. Journal of Experimental Psychology 12: 225–239.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1984. On the major class features and syllable theory. In Language sound structure, ed. Mark Aronoff and Richard Oehrle, 107–136. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1990. The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shinohara, Kazuko, and Shigeto Kawahara. 2010. A cross-linguistic study of sound symbolism: The images of size. Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS) 36: 396–410.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sohn, H.-M. 1999. The Korean language. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • The Korean Language Society. 1960. Sosacen [small dictionary]. Seoul: Jengumsa.

    Google Scholar 

  • The National Institute of the Korean Language. 2000. Compilation guidelines for the Great Standard Korean Dictionary II. http://www.korean.go.kr/front/reportData/reportDataView.do?report_seq=56 &mn_id=45. Accessed 26 Dec 2017.

  • Ultan, Russell. 1978. Size-sound symbolism. In Universals of human language Vol. 2. Phonology, ed. Joseph H. Greenberg, 525–568. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

  • Wright, Saundra K., Jennifer Hay, and Tessa Bent. 2005. Ladies first? Phonology, frequency, and the naming conspiracy. Linguistics 43(3): 531–561.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yamaguchi, Nakami (ed.). 2003. Kurashi no kotoba: Gion/gitaigo jiten [Language of life: A dictionary of mimetic words]. Tokyo: Kodansha.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yang, Byunggon. 1996. A comparative study of American English and Korean vowels produced by male and female speakers. Journal of Phonetics 24(2): 245–261.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank members of the Phonetics Research Group (Akira Utsugi and Han Wang) and of the Onomatope Study Group (Marino Motoyama, Ming Chen, Mengying Jin, Yajing Feng) at Nagoya University for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. N.K. acknowledges support from a postdoctoral fellowship for overseas researchers from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and a Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellows (#JP16F16729). K.M. gratefully acknowledges support from the Chuo University Leave Program for Special Research Projects.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Humanities, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science/Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya-shi, Japan

    Nahyun Kwon

  2. Faculty of Commerce, Chuo University, 742-1 Higashinakano, Hachioji-shi, Tokyo, 192-0393, Japan

    Keiko Masuda

Authors
  1. Nahyun Kwon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Keiko Masuda
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nahyun Kwon.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Kwon, N., Masuda, K. On the ordering of elements in ideophonic echo-words versus prosaic dvandva compounds, with special reference to Korean and Japanese. J East Asian Linguist 28, 29–53 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-019-09189-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-019-09189-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation