An inverse relation between expressiveness and grammatical integration: On the morphosyntactic typology of ideophones, with special reference to Japanese

Abstract

Words and phrases may differ in the extent to which they are susceptible to prosodic foregrounding and expressive morphology: their expressiveness. They may also differ in the degree to which they are integrated in the morphosyntactic structure of the utterance: their grammatical integration. We describe an inverse relation that holds across widely varied languages, such that more expressiveness goes together with less grammatical integration, and vice versa. We review typological evidence for this inverse relation in ten spoken languages, then quantify and explain it using Japanese corpus data. We do this by tracking ideophones -vivid sensory words also known as mimetics or expressivesacross different morphosyntactic contexts and measuring their expressiveness in terms of intonation, phonation and expressive morphology. We find that as expressiveness increases, grammatical integration decreases. Using gesture as a measure independent of the speech signal, we find that the most expressive ideophones are most likely to come together with iconic gestures. We argue that the ultimate cause is the encounter of two distinct and partly incommensurable modes of representation: the gradient, iconic, depictive system represented by ideophones and iconic gestures, and the discrete, arbitrary, descriptive system represented by ordinary words. The study shows how people combine modes of representation in speech and demonstrates the value of integrating description and depiction into the scientific vision of language.

Language as Description, Indication, and Depiction

“…Signers exploit the iconic nature of signs in such ways as to manipulate meaning construction, and in doing so, they profile the dual function of many signs as descriptions and depictions (see also the sign RUN in the Norwegian Sign Language example in Figure 2 ; Johnston and Ferrara, 2012; Ferrara and Halvorsen, 2017). Comparable manipulations of iconic words have been observed in spoken languages (e.g., Dingemanse and Akita, 2016; Dingemanse, 2017a), which points to interesting similarities and differences between signed and spoken language ecologies.…”

Total reduplication in Japanese ideophones: An exercise in Localized Canonical Typology

“…In contrast, the repetition of mimetic reduplicative forms is generally acceptable, as in koro-koro koro-koro < koro-koro 'rolling'. The acceptability of some repetitive forms of reduplicated mimetics may decrease in their verbal uses, because high expressiveness correlates with low integration into the general linguistic structure of a language (Dingemanse & Akita 2016;Dingemanse to appear). Nevertheless, there are no strong counter-examples against the use of repetition in mimetic reduplication.…”

Translanguaging in Translation: Evidence from Japanese Mimetics

“…Japanese Onomatopoeia Dictionary (NihongoOnomatopeJiten) 5 lists 4,500 mimetics (Ono, 2007). Japanese mimetics have been extensively discussed by linguists in light of structure, acquisition, and communication (Hirose, 1981;Kita, 1997;Hamano, 1998;Tamori and Schourup, 1999;Shinohara andUno, 2013, Dingemanse andAkita, 2016;Sasamoto and Jackson, 2016 among others).…”

“…3 Hasegawa (2015:71) and Dingemanse and Akita (2016) use the cover term "ideophone" instead of mimetics. 4 Some scholars classify mimetics into three groups: phonomimesthat iconically imitate actual sounds; phenomimesthat soundymbolically describe states; and psychomimesthat sound-symbolically describe mental states or sensations (Martin, 1975;Hirose, 1981, Shibatani, 1990Yamaguchi, 2007 among others).…”