Japanese sound symbolism

The Japanese language has a large inventory of sound symbolic or mimetic words, known in linguistics as ideophones. Such words are found in written as well as spoken Japanese. Known popularly as onomatopoeia, these words do not just imitate sounds but also cover a much wider range of meanings; indeed, many sound-symbolic words in Japanese are for things that make no noise originally, most clearly demonstrated by 'silently', not to be confused with the religion Shintō. The sound-symbolic words of Japanese can be classified into four main categories: Animate phonomime words that mimic sounds made by living things, like a dog's bark (wan-wan). Inanimate phonomime words that mimic sounds made by inanimate objects, like wind blowing or rain falling (zā-zā). Phenomime words that depict states, conditions, or manners of the external world (non-auditory senses), such as "damp" or "stealthily". Psychomime words that depict psychological states or bodily feelings. These divisions are not always drawn: sound-symbolism may be referred to generally as onomatopoeia (though strictly this refers to imitative sounds, phonomimes); phonomimes may not be distinguished as animate/inanimate, both being referred to as giseigo; and both phenomimes and psychomimes may be referred to as gitaigo. In Japanese grammar, sound-symbolic words primarily function as adverbs, though they can also function as verbs (verbal adverbs) with the auxiliary verb suru, often in the continuous/progressive form shiteiru, and as adjectives (participle) with the perfective form of this verb shita. Just like ideophones in many other languages, they are often introduced by a quotative complementizer to. Most sound symbolic words can be applied to only a handful of verbs or adjectives. In the examples below, the classified verb or adjective is placed in square brackets. Unlike the other examples, doki doki is an onomatopoeic word and mimics the sound of two heartbeats.

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Related concepts (4)

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is the use or creation of a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as oink, meow (or miaow), roar, and chirp. Onomatopoeia can differ by language: it conforms to some extent to the broader linguistic system; hence the sound of a clock may be expressed as tick tock in English, tic tac in Spanish and Italian (shown in the picture), in Mandarin, kachi kachi in Japanese, or tik-tik in Hindi.

Japanese sound symbolism

Reduplication

In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edward Sapir's: "generally employed, with self-evident symbolism, to indicate such concepts as distribution, plurality, repetition, customary activity, increase of size, added intensity, continuance." Reduplication is used in inflections to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc.