Search Results (7)

Ideophones are believed to exhibit distinct phonotactic patterns compared to regular language, in their expressiveness. Vowel harmony can be observed in ideophones in Modern Korean. However, over time, Korean has gradually lost its regular vowel harmony process, due to the influx of foreign words, especially from Chinese, and historical sound changes like the vowel shift of /ɔ/ to different vowel types. Previous studies have mainly focused on the vowel patterns of ideophones without necessarily comparing the degree of vowel harmony between ideophones and other lexical strata. This lack of comparison makes it challenging to assess the level of corruption in vowel harmony specifically within ideophones, relative to other components of the lexicon. To address this gap, this paper examines vowel patterns extracted from the online dictionary of Korean, developed by the National Institute of the Korean Language (NIKL) with contributions from anonymous users and specialists. The analysis specifically explores vowel patterns across lexical items with varying syllable lengths, focusing on the lexical stratum, adverbial parts of speech, and the semantic meaning of the adverbials. This examination aims to assess the regularity of vowel sequencing and determine the extent of purity in vowel harmony patterns. The quantitative analysis of the compiled dictionary provides valuable insights into the degree of irregular phonotactics and its relationship to sound symbolism in Modern Korean. Full article

The research aims to reveal neural indicators of recognition for iconic words and the possible cross-modal multisensory integration behind this process. The goals of this research are twofold: (1) to register event-related potentials (ERP) in the brain in the process of visual and auditory recognition of Russian imitative words on different de-iconization stages; and (2) to establish whether differences in the brain activity arise while processing visual and auditory stimuli of different nature. Sound imitative (onomatopoeic, mimetic, and ideophonic) words are words with iconic correlation between form and meaning (iconicity being a relationship of resemblance). Russian adult participants (n = 110) were presented with 15 stimuli both visually and auditorily. The stimuli material was equally distributed into three groups according to the criterion of (historical) iconicity loss: five explicit sound imitative (SI) words, five implicit SI words and five non-SI words. It was established that there was no statistically significant difference between visually presented explicit or implicit SI words and non-SI words respectively. However, statistically significant differences were registered for auditorily presented explicit SI words in contrast to implicit SI words in the N400 ERP component, as well as implicit SI words in contrast to non-SI words in the P300 ERP component. We thoroughly analyzed the integrative brain activity in response to explicit IS words and compared it to that in response to implicit SI and non-SI words presented auditorily. The data yielded by this analysis showed the N400 ERP component was more prominent during the recognition process of the explicit SI words received from the central channels (specifically Cz). We assume that these results indicate a specific brain response associated with directed attention in the process of performing cognitive decision making tasks regarding explicit and implicit SI words presented auditorily. This may reflect a higher level of cognitive complexity in identifying this type of stimuli considering the experimental task challenges that may involve cross-modal integration process. Full article

This paper aims to provide the readers with an overview of the nature of sound symbolism in Italian and offers new food for thought to scholars in the under-researched field of sound symbolism in translated literature for young readers. Whilst English uses ideophones in literature for young readers, Italian sound symbolism often seems to rely on Anglophonic creations, arguably due to both linguistic and cultural reasons. The third and fourth books of the series for children and young adults, ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’, have been taken as a source for examples. The books contain both text and pictures, which include ideophones in them. Each of the two English books has been analysed together with their Italian versions, and the strategies employed to translate sound symbolism have been catalogued into a small corpus. The results, on top of elucidating the nature of Italian sound symbolism, show a considerable degree of adaption and a frequent reliance on Anglophonic forms, with scattered attempts made at adapting English ideophones for the Italian readership. This is achieved through the modification of source forms to resemble Italian syntactical structures more closely and through the removal of certain consonant clusters that are considered typically Anglophonic (i.e., <th>, <sh>). Full article

In this work, we discuss how Araujo & Hagemeijer’s Santome/Portuguese bilingual dictionary defines and describes ideophones and realia lemmata. We show that ideophones were listed individually along with their expression counterparts. Realia lemmata (words and expressions for culture-specific items) or specialized lexical units were presented in their Santomean forms, followed by a description of their endemic specificities. Many realia items from Santome can also be found in Portuguese. We conclude that the authors contribute to the lexicographic record of ideophones, lexical items that did not exist in Portuguese, but relevant to the language and culture of Santome. On the other hand, with the documentation of realia entries, they collaborate for the validation of lexical units (originating in Santome) in the local vernacular variety of São Tomé and Príncipe’s Portuguese, a common historical practice in Portuguese lexicography. Full article

Linking interdisciplinarity and multimodality in translation studies, this paper will analyse the diachronic translation of English ideophones in Italian Disney comics. This is achieved thanks to the compiling of a bi-directional corpus of sound symbolic entries spanning six decades (1932–1992)—a corpus that was created following extensive archival work in various Italian and American libraries between 2014 and 2016. The central aim is to showcase practical examples coming from published comic scripts and to highlight patterns of translation in each of the five different time windows which were chosen according to specific historical, linguistic and cultural vicissitudes taking place in the Italian nation. Overall, the intention is to shed light on an under-developed area of studies that focuses on the cross-linguistical transposition of ideophonic forms in comic books and to pinpoint how greater factors might influence the treatment of such deceptively miniscule elements in the comic books’ pages. Full article

A similarity between the form and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) may help language users to more readily access its meaning through direct form-meaning mapping. Previous work has supported this view by providing empirical evidence for this facilitatory effect in sign language, as well as for onomatopoetic words (e.g., cuckoo) and ideophones (e.g., zigzag). Thus, it remains largely unknown whether the beneficial role of iconicity in making semantic decisions can be considered a general feature in spoken language applying also to “ordinary” words in the lexicon. By capitalizing on the affective domain, and in particular arousal, we organized words in two distinctive groups of iconic vs. non-iconic based on the congruence vs. incongruence of their lexical (meaning) and sublexical (sound) arousal. In a two-alternative forced choice task, we asked participants to evaluate the arousal of printed words that were lexically either high or low arousing. In line with our hypothesis, iconic words were evaluated more quickly and more accurately than their non-iconic counterparts. These results indicate a processing advantage for iconic words, suggesting that language users are sensitive to sound-meaning mappings even when words are presented visually and read silently. Full article

Several anthropologists of Amazonian societies in Ecuador have claimed that for Achuar [1] and Quichua speaking Runa [2-4] there is no fundamental distinction between humans on the one hand, and plants and animals on the other. A related observation is that Runa and Achuar people share an animistic cosmology whereby animals, plants, and even seemingly inert entities such as rocks and stones are believed to have a life force or essence with a subjectivity that can be expressed. This paper will focus on Quichua speaking Runa to seek linguistic evidence for animacy by examining the sound-symbolic properties of a class of expressions called ideophones. I argue that structural features of ideophones such as canonical length and diversity of sound segments as well as type of sound segments, help express the animism of the Runa lifeworld. Moreover, although these features are not indicative of any essential distinctions between plants and animals, they may be indicative of a scalar view of animacy, along the lines suggested by Descola who first proposed a continuum or ‘ladder of animacy’ for the Achuar [1, pp. 321-326]. Ideophones, then, may be understood as one set of linguistic tools for coming to terms with the diversity of their ecological setting, a setting which spans highly animate humans and animals, through less animate plants, trees, and rocks. Full article