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.

À propos de ce résultat

Cette page est générée automatiquement et peut contenir des informations qui ne sont pas correctes, complètes, à jour ou pertinentes par rapport à votre recherche. Il en va de même pour toutes les autres pages de ce site. Veillez à vérifier les informations auprès des sources officielles de l'EPFL.

Concepts associés (4)

Onomatopée

Lonomatopée (mot féminin issu du grec ancien , [ὀνομα(το) (mot) et poiía (fabrication, soit « création de mots »)] est un mot écrit utilisé pour transcrire un son non articulé. Par exemple, les expressions « cui-cui » et « » sont les interjections désignant le cri de l'oisillon, « crac » l'onomatopée évoquant le bruit d'une branche que l'on rompt ou d'un arbre qui tombe au sol, « plaf » et « plouf » correspondent au bruit d'un plongeon, etc.

Japanese sound symbolism

Redoublement (linguistique)

450px|vignette|Presénce du redoublement dans les langues du monde En linguistique, le redoublement ou réduplication est un procédé morphologique permettant d'exprimer, par la répétition complète ou partielle d'un mot ou d'un de ses morphèmes, un trait grammatical ou bien de créer un mot nouveau.