This paper will discuss several lexical semantic differences between mimetic verbs and conventional prosaic verbs in Japanese, and show that meaning for mimetic verbs calls for a treatment distinct from that of lexical verbs. Taking into account the notion of ‘affect-imagistic dimension’ (Kita 1997) in which a mimetic base is represented in terms of its images, I will argue that an analysis that incorporates the basic premise of frame semantics and construction grammar can accommodate the seemingly idiosyncratic and unconventional lexical semantic properties of mimetic verbs. The wide range of semantic frames of mimetic verbs is thus fed by the numerous images of the mimetic base and the specific constructions in which they appear.
Akita, Kimi. 2012. “Toward a Frame-Semantic Definition of Sound-Symbolic Words: A Collocational Analysis of Japanese Mimetics”. Cognitive Linguistics 23.67–90.
Apresjan, J. D. 1974. “Regular Polysemy”. Linguistics 142.5–32.
Aronoff, Mark. 1980. “Contextuals”. Language 56.744–758.
Chang, Andrew C. 1991. A Thesaurus of Japanese Mimesis and Onomatopoeia: Usage by Categories. Tokyo: Taishukan.
Clark, Eve & Herbert Clark. 1979. “When Nouns Surface as Verbs”. Language 55.767–811.
Fillmore, Charles. 1977a. “Topics in Lexical Semantics”. Current Issues in Linguistics Theory ed. by Peter Cole, 76–138. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Fillmore, Charles. 1977b. “The Case for Case Reopened”. Syntax and Semantics, vol. 8 ed. by Peter Cole & Jerrold Sadock, 59–81. New York: Academic Press.
Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions At Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldberg, Adele. 2010. “Verbs, Constructions, and Semantic Frames”. Syntax, Lexical Semantics and Event Structure ed. by Malka Rappaport Hovav, Edit Doron & Ivy Sichel, 39–58. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hamano, Shoko. 1998. The Sound-Symbolic System of Japanese. Stanford: CSLI.
Kageyama, Taro. 2007. “Explorations in the Conceptual Semantics of Mimetic Verbs”. Current Issues in the History and Structures of Japanese ed. by Bijarke Frellesvig, Masayoshi Shibatani & John Charles Smith, 27–82. Tokyo: Kurosio.
Kakehi, Hisao, Ikuhiro Tamori & Lawrence C. Schourup. 1996. Trends in Linguistics. Dictionary of Iconic Expressions in Japanese. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Kita, Sotaro. 1997. “Two-Dimensional Analysis of Japanese Mimetics”. Linguistics 35.379–415.
Lehrer, Adrienne. 1978. “Structures of the Lexicon and Transfer of Meaning”. Lingua 45.95–123.
Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McClure, William. 2000. Using Japanese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nuckolls, Janis B. 1996. Sound-Like Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rappaport Hovav, Malka & Beth Levin. 1998. “Building Verb Meanings”. The Projection of Arguments ed. by Miriam Butt & Wilhelm Geuder, 97–134. Stanford: CSLI.
Talmy, Leonard. 1985. “Lexicalization Patterns: Semantic Structure in Lexical Forms”. Language Typology and Syntactic Description, 3 ed. by Timothy Shopen, 57–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics, vol. 2. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Tsujimura, Natsuko. 2003. “Mimetic Verbs as Contextuals”. Paper presented at the annual meeting of Linguistic Society of America, Atlanta, January 2003.
Tsujimura, Natsuko. 2005. “A Constructional Approach to Mimetic Verbs”. Grammatical Constructions: Back to the Roots ed. by Mirjam Fried & Hans C. Boas, 137–154. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Tsujimura, Natsuko. 2007a. An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tsujimura, Natsuko. 2007b. “Mimetic Verbs and Innovative Verbs in the Acquisition of Japanese. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 31.371–382.
Tsujimura, Natsuko. 2010. “Onomatope-Dooshi no Imi, Koo-Koozoo no Itikoosatsu”. [On the meaning and argument structure of mimetic verbs]. Kansai Linguistic Society 29.334–343.
Tsujimura, Natsuko & Stuart Davis. 2011. “A Construction Approach to Innovative Verbs in Japanese”. Cognitive Linguistics 22.797–823.
2017. The linguistic integration of Japanese ideophones and its typological implications. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 62:2 ► pp. 314 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 january 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.