Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives

Download or read book Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives written by Kimi Akita and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-05-06 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores new frontiers in the linguistic study of iconic lexemes known as ideophones, mimetics, and expressives. A large part of the literature on this long-neglected word class has been dedicated to the description of its sound symbolism, marked morphophonology, and grammatical status in individual languages. Drawing on data from Asian (especially Japanese), African, American, and European languages, the twelve chapters in this volume aim to establish common grounds for theoretical and crosslinguistic discussions of the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, acquisition, and variation of iconic lexemes. Not only researchers who are interested in linguistic iconicity but also theoretical linguists and typologists will benefit from the updated insights presented in each study.